Healthcare Recruitment: Challenges and Solutions

Introduction

The ITES Healthcare recruitment is currently witnessing an increase in sector broadening opportunities and vacancies for executive-level hiring. And it is actively reshaping how things work in hiring healthcare technology professionals.

Leading to an obvious deal of hiring stress: Healthcare recruitment systems for ITES sector are now dealing with some pretty unique challenges, like not having enough staff, budget constraints, a growing need for specialized healthcare support services, and adapting to new ways of working. Some of the majorly affected roles are medical coders, billers, transcriptionists, scribers, customer service etc.

We understand that what sets healthcare apart from all the other industries is its distinctive recruitment needs. We're here to lend a hand! Our blog will help you navigate through some of the best healthcare recruitment strategies and tools, find appropriate solutions to your hiring challenges, and unwrap the efficient strategies for managing healthcare professionals in the present day. 

What is healthcare recruitment?

Healthcare recruitment is a vital process for the healthcare industry, as it involves finding, hiring, and retaining the best talent for a wide range of medical support roles and positions in the healthcare and technology sector. The recruitment of Healthcare ITES professionals are done for various healthcare support services as mentioned above.

Healthcare recruiters and decision makers need to be very cautious while selecting candidates, as concerns the critical role of dealing with sensitive information and healthcare data.

Here are some effective strategies used by healthcare recruiters to hire the best healthcare professional: 

1. Finding and Sourcing Talent:

This is all about locating potential healthcare professionals, such as support staff and administrative staff. It involves actively searching for candidates through various channels, like job boards, career fairs, or online networks. An online assessment platform can streamline this process by efficiently screening and shortlisting potential candidates. The goal is to build a pool of qualified individuals who could be a good fit for the healthcare organization. Some characteristics to look for are:

Comprehensive Expertise in Healthcare and IT

Healthcare ITES requires professionals who have a thorough knowledge of both healthcare practices and IT systems. They should be able to handle complex tasks such as medical coding, billing, transcription, data analysis, etc.

Positive and Professional Attitude:

Healthcare ITES professionals should have a positive and professional attitude towards their work and clients. They should be able to communicate effectively, work in teams, and handle pressure and deadlines.

Cultural Fit with the Organization and the Industry:

Healthcare ITES companies may have a specific culture and ethics that reflect the values and standards of the healthcare industry. Screening and recruiting individuals who can align with the organizational culture through culture fit assessments ensures quality and compliance.

Data Security and Privacy Awareness:

Healthcare ITES deals with sensitive patient data that needs to be protected from unauthorized access and misuse. Recruiting individuals who are aware of the cybersecurity and data privacy regulations and best practices is a challenge.

2. Screening and Selecting Candidates

Once you've identified potential candidates, the next step is to evaluate their qualifications and suitability. This involves reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, and assessing their skills and experience with psychometric tests. In healthcare, it's crucial to ensure candidates meet the necessary qualifications, certifications, and have the right attitude and values for dealing with case sensitive information.

3. Orientation and Onboarding

After selecting a candidate, the focus shifts to helping them integrate smoothly into the healthcare organization. Orientation and onboarding programs are designed to familiarize new hires with the use of technologies, facility's policies, procedures, and culture. In healthcare, this also includes ensuring they understand patient care protocols and safety standards.

4. Training and Retention

Training in healthcare is an ongoing process. Healthcare ITES professionals must stay updated with the latest medical advancements and technologies. Additionally, retention strategies are crucial to keep talented individuals on board. This may involve creating a positive work environment, offering career development opportunities, and recognizing and rewarding employees for their contributions to patient care.

Why is medical recruitment important to the healthcare industry?

The ITES Healthcare recruitment serves as the heartbeat of the medical industry. Let's dive into why recruitment holds a vital role in the healthcare industry, and it's not just about filling job openings. 

• Specialized and high-quality support for the daily chores of healthcare professionals like keeping tabs on medical reports like transcriptors and scribers. 
• Healthcare ITES is an emerging sector of healthcare employment and requires talent with technical and domain expertise. For example: Data analysts and medical coders.  
• ITES healthcare recruitment contributes to hiring a skilled team for IT support that works on the improvement of patient security and satisfaction. 
• The healthcare support team such as customer service representatives helps to maintain a motivated workforce that ensures a smooth health journey for patients.

Challenges in Recruiting Health Care ITES Professionals with Solutions

1. Bridging Workforce Gaps

In the healthcare realm, there is an acute shortage of skilled professionals and that threatens the quality of data processing, record keeping, translating, customer service, etc.  Medical recruitment with the right HRTech tools acts as the bridge, spanning the chasm between this deficit and the evolving landscape of healthcare.  

Problem: The skill gap is a major issue even claimed by McKinsey & Company's insights. They affirm healthcare professionals must acquire new skills of acquaintance with digital tools, such as data literacy and human-machine collaboration. In simple words, healthcare ITES professionals are needed in medical organizations to employ the new technology of data handling and processing. 

Solution: To navigate the transformative journey of making healthcare practices more effective, the healthcare support team must be well-trained. The skill required to take charge of different ITES Healthcare job roles must be assessed while screening. 

These skills may include domain knowledge assessment, domain application assessment, and personality evaluators. The coding and typing skills are also assessed to ensure on-job performance. Cognitive abilities (recall skills, attention to detail, logical reasoning) are a must to check for in all job seekers. The voice process evaluation can also help healthcare recruiters to screen language proficiency and comprehension. 

The tools for recruiting healthcare ITES teams need to be scientifically reliable. For instance, one can use psychometric assessments for candidate profile evaluation. It can help healthcare recruiters cope with the vast evolution in the healthcare industry.

2. Crafting Ideal Matches

Medical recruitment is not a mere matchmaking game; it's the art of aligning the perfect candidate with the ideal role. This can be assured by advanced and in-depth profile analysis of the applicants. In doing so, healthcare organizations orchestrate a symphony of enhanced employee performance, heightened productivity, and unwavering engagement. 

Problem: Half-hearted and mindless employees in a healthcare organization can bring about disastrous mistakes. This risks the quality of patient care in the organization be it directly or indirectly. 

Solution: To achieve ideal employee onboarding and engagement, healthcare recruitment practices must include appropriate pre-employment screening and post-employment evaluation of their workforce. It can help in reducing hiring time while also cutting short the expenses of replacing the inaccurately selected workforce. 

The psychometric tests can assess the important ITES healthcare competencies like on-job behavior such as teamwork, adaptability, flexibility, attention to detail, etc. The pre-employment assessments, including aptitude assessment tools, will check for the alignment of the right skills and attitudes of candidates toward a job role. While post-employment assessment will evaluate the job performance, engagement levels, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation of the employees.

3. Talent Retention

‘Prevention is always better than cure', upskilling and rightfully promoting deserving workforce is better than filling vacancies every next season. For healthcare organizations to provide the best possible service for their clients and remain competitive, it is essential to attract and retain the best skills. Healthcare organizations often lack a comprehensive strategy to retain top talent and provide an attractive work environment when it comes to ITES positions in the healthcare sector. Predictive analysis of the candidates at an early stage can help healthcare recruiters to hire genuine individuals for the long run.

Problem: A staggering 89% workforce churn, as noted by Nursing Solutions between 2015 and 2019, emphasizes the urgency of retaining top talent.

Solution: In an environment where personnel turnover can be dizzyingly high. The performance evaluation process must be automated to engage more employees. The psychometric tests are easy to administer for healthcare recruiters and have a high completion rate by young test takers. It can obtain a detailed prediction report on candidates' full potential in a job role.

4. Cultivating a Nurturing Culture

Healthcare recruitment is the architect of a harmonious organizational culture and an inclusive, diverse workforce. This nurturing environment ripples through the healthcare fabric, elevating moral, kindling loyalty, and solidifying employee retention. To ensure diversity and inclusion in the healthcare industry, recruiters need to adapt hiring tools that eliminate human errors while making important recruitment decisions. 

Problem: The recruiters' biases and unreliable automation of the screening process can often bring down the quality of hire. A defective screening and performance evaluation process allows unworthy candidates or employees to infiltrate the active workforce. They eventually drag down the performance metrics in the healthcare ITES industry. 

Solution: Luckily, right healthcare recruitment automation can assure you the contrasting opposite. It can help the organization foster diversity and inclusion. It also encourages rightful orientation and appraisal within the organization. This can be achieved by blind resumes, or even better, visual based cultural fitment assessments. The psychometric tests are objective, bias-free, and reliable evaluation technology.

5. Adapting to Patient Tides

Patients today are discerning and seeking personalized, accessible, and cost-effective healthcare services. Recruitment in healthcare serves as the compass, guiding healthcare organizations to navigate these patient expectations. Healthcare recruiters must assess customer orientation as a competency for roles like customer service, telehealth care, and pharma sales. 

Problem: There are 325,000 mobile health apps working today. The growing preference for online booking and payment systems underpins this shifting landscape. This demands virtual assistance to help patients use the service remotely. Failure to meet these evolving demands risks the dreaded repercussion of diminished patient satisfaction scores. 

Solution: New segments of healthcare services need new talents who understand the industry as well as their job roles. This can be assisted by thorough screening of candidates with highly standardized or promptly customizable psychometric assessment tools.

PMaps Healthcare Recruitment Tests for Healthcare Recruiters

One of the best practices during health care recruiting is to use psychometric tests that measure the skills and personalities of the candidates. These online assessment tests can help healthcare recruiters screen out unqualified applicants, identify the best fit for the role and the organization, and reduce the time and cost of hiring.

However, not all online assessment tests are created equal. Some tests may be too generic, too lengthy, or too irrelevant for the specific healthcare roles. That's why healthcare recruiters need to choose the right tests that match their hiring needs and goals.

PMaps psychometric tests are visual-based, quick, and engaging. It meets the needs of healthcare recruiters equally as much as it appeals to the expectations of young medical professionals. PMaps tests are also scientifically validated and reliable, which ensures the accuracy and fairness of the results. 

PMaps tests provide in-depth reports and interactive dashboards that help healthcare recruiters make informed and data-driven hiring decisions. It enhances the candidate's experience and reduces their test anxiety. 

Some of the most demanded PMaps tests for recruiting healthcare professionals are:

• Language test: This test assesses the candidate's ability to communicate effectively in English or any other language required for the role. The test covers grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing skills. The test is adaptive and adjusts to the candidate's level of language proficiency.
• Scribe assessment: This test evaluates the candidate's ability to transcribe medical information accurately and efficiently. The test covers medical terminology, abbreviations, symbols, formats, and standards. The test also measures the candidate's typing speed, accuracy, and attention to detail.
• Medical coder assessment: This test measures the candidate's ability to assign codes to diagnoses and procedures according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) systems. The test covers coding rules, guidelines, conventions, and modifiers. The test also assesses the candidate's analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Domain specific assessment: This is a test section that assesses the candidate's knowledge and understanding of the specific healthcare domain they are applying for, such as cardiology, oncology, radiology, etc. The test covers basic concepts, principles, procedures, and best practices related to the domain. The test also evaluates the candidate's clinical reasoning and decision-making skills. It can assess their ability to apply the knowledge and skills in the job role.
  
  
• Data analyst assessment: This test evaluates the candidate's ability to collect, analyze, interpret, and present data related to healthcare outcomes, quality, performance, and improvement. The test covers data sources, types, formats, tools, techniques, methods, and models. The test also measures the candidate's logical thinking, reasoning skills, and many more.

Conclusion

Healthcare recruitment is witnessing an opportunity for growth amidst the challenges. There is an alarming need for the industry to learn how to tackle talent shortage, adapt to technology, and ensure a diverse and inclusive workforce. To smartly surf through these rising tides, healthcare organizations should invest in tools that promote the scientific screening of candidates and evaluation of employees. It should focus on skill development and employee engagement. 

The PMaps visual-based assessment tests can be one of the best alternatives to traditional healthcare recruitment practices. The industry can then ensure high-quality patient care and meet evolving patient expectations. If you are interested in learning more about PMaps healthcare recruitment solutions, contact our experts now through email ssawant@pmaps.in  or by phone at (+91 8591320212). Book a quick 30 mins demo for better understanding.