COVID-19 has led to staff cuts… Now what?

COVID-19 has led to staff cuts… Now what?

Hospitals have to make tough decisions due to the ongoing pandemic. As a result, hospital compliance staff across the nation are being laid off.

Over the last few months, COVID-19 has had devastating effects on the economy and hospitals and the health care industry have been among the hardest hit. According to U.S. News, “The average hospital has seen about a 40% to 45% decrease in operating revenue during this period of time.” These financial losses inevitably are forcing hospitals and health care companies to layoff or reduce hours of their staff.

Often, employees in charge of managing compliance are among the first to be let go.

While staff cuts are a solution in the short-term, it can also have more unforeseen long-term negative effects. Without the staff that are dedicated compliance leaders it can become increasingly difficult to navigate the complexities of maintaining hospital compliance. Unfortunately, if a hospital or health care company is found to be non-compliant, the new costs of losing licenses and potential lawsuits will offset any of the costs saved with staff cut.

To help navigate these difficult times, implementing an automated policy management tool can minimize the unrealized costs of compliance staff leaving. HospitalPORTAL has been a leader in the hospital Intranet and Policy Management for the last 20 years.

With the solution staff can easily find policies while managing the approval workflows, revisions, and acknowledgments of their employees, all of which will help transition to successful hospital and healthcare compliance in light of staff cuts.

In an independent study by Ponemon Institute and Tripwire, Inc. it was found that the average cost of having non-compliance issues for an organization is almost $9.4 million. These are costs that can be detrimental to a healthcare organization and can be avoided.

With increased organization and automated workflows that HospitalPORTAL provides, the responsibility of compliance is decentralized and can easily be maintained by the healthcare organization as a whole rather than a single individual.

Overall, COVID-19 has exposed underlying issues in healthcare organizations across the country. But even before the pandemic hit healthcare organizations, particularly rural healthcare organizations, have seen tightening budgets. In order to not fall behind, switching to an automated system might be one of the few ways to alleviate these problems.