Staffing shortages have long plagued the hospice industry, with the furrowing brows on providers deepening as the coronavirus pandemic adds worsening pressure. More providers are turning to technology platforms to ensure timely communication with staff, create efficiency and reduce burnout.
Widespread workforce shortages in hospice and palliative care are expected to worsen during the next 25 years, with research indicating that supply will be outpaced by demand for serious illness and end-of-life care. The pandemic has only exacerbated the issue. More than 20% of health care workers have contemplated leaving the field due to stress brought on by the pandemic and 30% have considered reducing their hours, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open
Timely and effective communication is paramount for keeping staff connected with their employers and patients, according to Catherine Sapp, executive director at Avita Home Health & Hospice. The Ohio-based nonprofit hospice serves eight counties in the state, several of which are rural with staff often dispersed across remote areas.
“Unfortunately in health care turnover happens with patients and staff, and it can be difficult to keep up,” Sapp told Hospice News during a recent webinar. “Updated scheduling and patient information in real time — that is paramount for our staff. Reliable messaging is so important. We need to be able to send messages out to multiple people at one time when dealing with hospice clients. We deal with an interdisciplinary team of people and we have many, many people involved in their care that need to know certain things about the patient.”
Retirement and burnout are factors leading some clinicians to leave the field as well. The inability to maintain sufficient staffing levels has caused some agencies to close, reduce utilization of their inpatient facilities or sell their assets to larger providers with greater resources to devote to recruitment.
Hospices have increasingly begun to adopt technology to build efficiency into their workflows, partly to help combat staff burnout. Burnout in particular has been tied to large patient caseloads, around-the-clock care and the unpredictable nature of hospice hours, coupled with staff regularly bearing witness to grief and loss.
With the pool of labor resources dwindling, a communication platform with real-time messaging can maintain an up-to-date flow of information, but also boost morale when they feel heard and have access to leadership, according to Sapp. The technology is available, but the challenge can lie in figuring out how to utilize it appropriately, said Sapp.
“Just having the ability to let staff know that you care and that you’re there [is] sometimes that is just enough to boost that morale and camaraderie,” Sapp said. “It’s sometimes hard to see that everybody’s in the same boat and everybody’s working hard to get what the patient needs. We’re able to understand each other, and bring that focus back to why we do what we do.”
As far as a return on investment, time is money when it comes to staff communications. Being able to quantify the amount of time staff saves through a technology platform can drive down administrative and travel costs, Sapp indicated.
“Everybody wants to be able to quantify how much time we can save,” said Sapp. “On average, we calculated that we could save at least four hours a week of nurse drive time just by not having to run back and forth to the office to send communications that way. If we can take some of that stress and frustration away, then that is definitely a worthwhile investment for us. There’s no disruption of care for anybody involved, which is wonderful and what we wanted ultimately.”
