Rural Healthcare Staffing: What Admins Wish Agencies Knew
If you’re a rural healthcare leader, you understand that rural health is hard. Rural healthcare is complex, the patient populations are unique, yet the needs are significant. You’re likely juggling financial constraints, staffing logistics, regulatory compliance, technical infrastructure, and more. When you need to bring in outside help to ensure your facility is operating at its best for your community, choosing the right partner becomes critical.
As a staffing agency specializing in rural and remote healthcare staffing, we’ve learned a few key lessons over the years about building successful partnerships with the facilities we work with. In this article, we’ll divulge some of our top takeaways and how you can ensure that your staffing agency understands your needs and can help you to solve some of healthcare’s most difficult problems.
Issue: Providers Lack the Right Skillset and Experience for Rural and Remote Assignments
While providers may look qualified on paper, they may not have the hands-on experience for the types of patients that will walk through your doors.
Solve:
This is a conversation topic that frequently arises within our internal team at WMS. We are continually refining the formula to match the right provider with the right facility, as rural and remote staffing present unique challenges.
Typically, the first part of the conversation is listening. It’s helpful to clearly outline the needs of your facility. Consider key details, including the current staffing mix, patient volumes, facility resources (such as available medications and equipment), acuity level, housing availability, and rotation schedule requirements.
When we seek to match a provider, we want to ensure that they not only possess the relevant skillset but can also perform the required tasks with the resources available at your facility. Many providers who contract with WMS have experience in the military, the Peace Corps, or other circumstances where unique healthcare challenges allow them to thrive. They often crave work where they can practice meaningful medicine, rather than just meeting quotas. Frequently, rural and remote assignments will enable them to do this.
Why it matters:
In remote areas, there’s no room for a steep learning curve. Administrators need assurance that providers can not only manage the clinical load but can do so confidently, independently, and with strong critical thinking skills. In communities with limited EMS availability or delayed access to transport, provider expertise is crucial.
Issue: Staffing Models Aren’t the Same in Rural/Remote Areas as They Are in Urban Ones
Getting providers to provide continuity of care, fill in for full-time providers’ time off, and other staffing shortages in rural and remote areas often means longer rotations and out-of-the-box searching for providers. Travel can be expensive, long, and tedious, and going home after each shift is not a reality.
Solve:
Staffing agencies often need to expand their search parameters beyond the city, region, or state. It is not uncommon for us to place a provider who lives full-time in Florida on three-week rotations in remote Alaska, where they will travel many miles from village clinic to village clinic on bush planes. For clients, this means we advise being considerate about travel to secure providers who will be a good fit for your facility.
Additionally, to manage budgets, many of our rural and remote clients are also considerate of scheduling. However, there is a balance to how long locum tenens providers are willing to stay on rotation before wanting some time off, which means that rotations are typically a minimum of 3-4 weeks, with some providers staying for a few months at a time. At WMS, we have years of experience successfully placing healthcare providers in rural and remote locations, so we’re always happy to share what we’ve found works – where there is a blend of the facility getting the coverage it needs and the provider receives the breaks they want, too.
While we know that most healthcare administrators prefer providers to return to the same facility repeatedly, sometimes providers choose not to. While many reasons can be attributed to this, it is often simply because one of the perks of locum life is flexibility and the ability to work in different locations. If you want a provider to rotate for a specific amount of time continually, it is essential to communicate this to your staffing agency upfront so that expectations are clear. Understanding your rotations and duration of needs can help to find providers who will agree to your need.
Additionally, planning at least 3-6 months (or more) ahead of when you need providers to start in rural and remote areas can be very helpful, as it ensures there is enough time for credentialing and, potentially, licensing. This timeline can vary based on your credentialing requirements. If you know that it typically takes three months to fully credential a provider at your facility, start your search early! It can also be beneficial to be open to credentialing additional providers if you anticipate needing multiple providers throughout the year.
Why it Matters:
When your facility needs additional staffing, you want the providers to plug into your community seamlessly, stay within your budget, and know you can depend on locums to provide dependable care. Using models that work in urban areas often won’t be effective in rural and remote areas, for various reasons. Therefore, being realistic about your needs while also considering the provider’s needs will pay off in the long run.
Issue: Communication breakdowns between agencies and providers leave administrators in the dark during critical phases of staffing.
You likely juggle multiple roles, so when you’re working with partners like staffing agencies, it can make it more challenging to plan effectively when communication isn’t transparent.
Solve:
To assist with communication between you and your staffing agency, and your staffing agency and the provider, set expectations early. Communicate your timeline, what your credentialing process will look like, travel logistics, on-staff provider mix, patient volume, type of facility, and any other relevant details that will help your staffing agency partner to have a realistic understanding of your needs.
Proactively engaging with your agency when they have questions or when they submit a provider and are waiting for feedback is also highly beneficial. Many times, agencies will have multiple open positions that one provider may be qualified for, so being mindful about responses when providers are submitted for review can help you ensure you get the provider you want. Otherwise, the provider might move to a different open position, which can delay things for your facility and the agency while they try to find someone else. On the other hand, if you would like your agency to submit someone else or additional providers, please let them know.
Once you’re ready to move forward with a provider, updating your staffing agency during the credentialing process can also be very helpful. Some agencies have in-house credentialing departments, but we recognize that certain aspects of the process must be handled directly with the facility’s credentialing team. Since the staffing agency advocates for both the provider and the client, it’s helpful to communicate any hiccups or delays to the staffing agency so that they can pass on the information to the provider or at least gain a better understanding of the provider’s progress during the process.
Identifying one central point of contact at your facility is also very helpful to the staffing agency. Whether it’s you as the primary administrator, a clinical director, or an HR lead, knowing who to direct questions to or who to update with pertinent information will help to foster a positive relationship with your staffing agency, and in turn, the provider you’ll work with.
Why It Matters:
Communication is crucial in any relationship, but especially important in healthcare staffing, where numerous aspects are involved, including patient care. Effective communication can bridge the gap between providers and clients, leading to positive outcomes for your facility and community.
Issue: Credentialed providers may not always be the best cultural fit for rural communities.
In rural and remote areas, cultural fit is a crucial component in ensuring that providers are successful and your organization is viewed positively by the community. Ensuring providers are prepared for potentially slower-paced days, closer relationships with patients, and a different way of life from their typical day-to-day routine can foster success.
Solve:
We’ve found that to make a placement successful, the provider wants to return, the client requests the provider’s return, and the community is strengthened by trusting that they can access excellent healthcare, regardless of how remote or rural the area is.
For providers working with Wilderness Medical Staffing, we must ensure that they can integrate into the community’s culture and, if the assignments are truly remote, possess the mental fortitude to succeed in often isolated regions. This typically involves a more in-depth interview process, well before they are passed on to the client for consideration for a role. Providers will often need to be autonomous in their roles, so ensuring they can handle potentially isolating situations is also essential.
When clients can also provide insights into their community, it can be especially beneficial for the staffing agency to offer prospective providers more information about the assignments. Additionally, as the process moves forward, continuing to educate and provide resources to providers through the onboarding process and beyond can help them feel more welcome.
The providers may need to adjust to weather or how they acquire necessities, such as food, when circumstances are outside their typical comfort zone. Whether providers are working in a farming community or on a reservation, understanding how the community works and thrives, as well as what it will be like to live there during their temporary assignment, can help them succeed.
Why It Matters:
When a provider meshes with the community, it increases the likelihood of successful assignments, repeat contracts, and better patient care. A poor cultural fit isn’t just inconvenient; it can also harm morale and erode trust in future staffing efforts.
Issue: Lack of Understanding Around Onboarding and Orientation Realities
Many providers arrive expecting urban-style onboarding, where resources may be plentiful, but in rural and remote areas, the reality of fewer resources, including limited staffing, can make the onboarding and orientation process different from what a provider might be used to.
Solve:
To ensure providers are prepared before coming on an assignment, facility leaders should be upfront with providers about what onboarding will (and won’t) entail before they accept the assignment. Outlining the timeline and providing providers with a clear understanding of what will be covered can be helpful in ensuring they are ready to work on day one.
It can be helpful for facilities to provide an onboarding documentation packet that covers details such as which EHR system they use and who their primary points of contact are. At WMS, we strive to overcommunicate with our providers, so they have as much information as possible before an assignment. However, there are some things that we won’t know, so the healthcare facility needs to communicate thoroughly with the provider. Encouraging providers to ask questions before assignments can also help ensure they feel comfortable upon arrival.
When facilities can reinforce expectations of the providers upfront, it can help them acclimate and start their assignments feeling prepared and ready to go.
Why it Matters:
Setting clear expectations not only can make the provider and facility feel better prepared to welcome them, but it also builds trust. When administrators or other personnel aren’t forced to scramble to onboard unprepared providers, they can focus on delivering care and not putting out fires caused by mismatched assumptions.
Conclusion:
Leaders in rural and remote healthcare deserve partners and providers who understand what makes these types of facilities so unique. By working closely with your staffing agency, you can find the right providers for your needs and create a successful staffing arrangement for everyone.
Interested in learning more? Contact us to discuss your goals and challenges and to see if we’re the right fit for you.
