Addressing recruitment challenges in digital health

Healthcare has been moving into the digital age for quite some time. Meaningful Use was introduced as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 (part of American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)).

The Meaningful Use measures gave healthcare a shot in the arm to implement digital technologies for electronic health records (EHRs). The age of paper medical records was over. Then Covid happened, accelerating all kinds of healthcare processes into the digital stratosphere. Now a large majority of healthcare processes, from EHRs to patient engagement platforms are fully digitized.

While such changes are an overall positive for healthcare, they have created additional challenges in their wake. One of which is the need for skilled individuals to implement, maintain, and operate the technology.

The need for skills ranges from those of IT professionals who can implement and maintain this new technology, to employees who must be able to interact with it. With this, the challenge of recruiting and retaining top talent has proven challenging; especially when considering healthcare organizations are often competing for talent across industries like tech companies and finance. Attracting suitable candidates is not a luxury; it’s an imperative in providing high quality patient care.

The Recruitment Challenges:

While healthcare has seen a tech revolution, this has come at the price of a talent crunch. Given the embeddedness of digital technology across all patient care and engagement processes, it is important to have staff with in-depth understanding. Candidates with this combination of skills are in high demand, and that demand has outstripped supply.

It is common for staff with sought-after technical skills to be lured away by tech and finance companies offering lucrative compensation packages with significant opportunities for career advancement. Compounding this issue is the impact on smaller rural organizations with thin budgets and non-competitive advancement opportunities. The result has been a battle for talent that is leaving healthcare organizations, especially small rural ones, in the digital dust.

Key Considerations for Healthcare Recruiters:

The big question becomes: what can healthcare organizations do to effectively compete in such a tight market? To do this there needs to be significant focus on the following:

• Market Awareness
  • In-depth knowledge of the competitive landscape is crucial, requiring in-depth study of the current market. Evaluating company goals, objectives, as well as current and future resource & skill gaps relative to the market will help with the development of targeted recruitment and retention initiatives. Benchmarking against target markets and calibrating pay and benefits to be market-competitive can help elevate organizational status to be an employer of choice.
• Job Appeal
  • One of the most neglected elements in HR is attention paid to ensuring high-quality job descriptions. This is even more crucial to understanding how quickly tech moves. Skills that were crucial two years ago are eclipsed by new skills reflective of the most current technologies. If job descriptions and job postings are outdated, recruiters will always be one step behind, actively recruiting outdated technologies and failing to make jobs attractive to those candidates who thrive on opportunities for added challenge and opportunities for career growth. This not only applies to candidates accountable for tech implementation and maintenance. It also applies to the up-and-coming younger generation who are tech-savvy and who bring much-needed technical skills to almost every job in an organization.
• Diversity and Inclusion
  • In this tech-enabled world, expanding the potential pool of candidates is crucial. By tapping into an expanded candidate market through focus on diversity and inclusion efforts, the prospect of finding a highly qualified candidate expands exponentially. Likewise, technology growth requires varying perspectives to spur innovation. Increasing the available candidate pool through diversity and inclusion fosters a faster, more effective growth trajectory.

Solutions to Attract Digital Health Talent:

• Revise job descriptions
  • Updating job descriptions to be reflective of current work and demonstrate forward thinking can be a game-changer in attracting candidates.
• Build partnerships
  • Academic institutions, tech boot camps, and professional associations are pumping out highly-skilled candidates every day. By tapping into their training pools, organizations can assure high-quality candidates hungry to apply their skills and talents. Likewise, building partnerships gives organizations an opportunity to influence curricula to better suit market demands.
• Ensure competitive compensation
  • Utilizing market surveys paired with an in-depth understanding of current and future hiring challenges provides the backbone in ensuring competitive compensation. Having a deep understanding of what candidates are looking for in their jobs helps in crafting novel benefits which may help outweigh pay when budgets are constrained. The pay and benefits mix of the past has shifted as younger candidates value so much more than just what they’re making and ho-hum traditional benefits.
• Focus on employer branding
  • Think about what makes you an employer of choice. Gather and publicize success stories that highlight career challenges and advancement. Moreover, gather and publicize stories which showcase the company’s position as an innovator in the digital health arena. So many candidates are driven by taking part in initiatives that show cutting-edge innovation. Story after story shows employees engaged in cutting edge initiatives are more apt to seek employment in or stay with organizations, even in the face of making more money elsewhere. Be proud of your innovation and let the world know what you do!

Conclusion:

Digital health is changing the face of healthcare, necessitating a workforce equipped to navigate and innovate new technology. Organizations who take a methodical approach to identifying current and future needs, tailoring recruitment and retention to those needs will be highly competitive in seeking and retaining top talent. From modernizing job descriptions, to developing strategic partnerships, to ensuring novel and competitive compensation, the organizations doing these things will stand out as employers of choice.