Solving Crisis in Long Term Care Staffing Needs Modern Tools - Expert Panel

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Sep 20, 2018, 09:46 ET

SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The workforce is the most important driver of clinical, financial and patient/client satisfaction outcomes in senior living and long-term/post-acute care, a panel of experts – including Arena CEO Michael Rosenbaum – told attendees of the Ziegler Senior Living Finance and Strategy Conference. Ensuring staff is happy – both by putting the right employees in the right positions at the right times, and taking care of their wants and needs – is at the core of driving those outcomes, the experts said.

The conference focuses on cutting-edge finance and strategic positioning trends affecting today's senior living providers. It's the industry's leading conference designed for CEOs, CFOs, key board members and institutional investors, credit enhancers, rating agency representatives and industry professionals.

Staff turnover in senior care facilities is the highest in healthcare, which trails only hospitality in overall turnover rates. Annual turnover averages above 50%. By 2024 more than 2 million new jobs are projected to be needed in long-term care, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Staff recruitment and retention was rated the highest concern among senior living CFOs in a recent study by Ziegler.

Rosenbaum told attendees that retention of staff is dependent on finding the right jobs for them in the first place. Arena uses artificial intelligence to predict the likelihood that a particular prospective or actual employee will stay or be engage or show up to work on time in a particular role, building and/or department. It replaces educated guesses based on resumes and interviews with predictions based a wide range of data, in much the same way Amazon and Netflix base recommendations on previous behaviors. The findings, he said, are not always intuitive; the same candidate who might fail to work out in a job might thrive in the exact same position in a different unit or hospital.

In a time of near full employment, Arena can also find workers from outside the traditional channels who might be well-suited to a specific task, he said.

Also on the panel was Steve Haynes, executive vice president of OnShift, whose software uses online, interactive tools for hiring, scheduling and employee engagement. He spoke about how his company helps reduce turnover by managing scheduling, engages staff by monitoring satisfaction in real time through mobile devices, and rewards contributions to improve employee engagement and retention.

And Safwan Shah, founder & CEO, PayActiv, a firm that delivers solutions for hourly workers who experience cash flow problems between paychecks, spoke about how helping them solve financial challenges reduces expenses, stress and turnover for this core part of the workforce.

About Arena

Arena collects, analyzes and incorporates robust data to predict a given applicant's likelihood to succeed in a particular healthcare organizations' culture. Instead of individual judgements and hypotheses, Arena develops and applies models that align most closely with the everyday realities on which a prosperous and pleasant work culture depends. Its proven solutions lower turnover at client institutions by a median of 38%, resulting in better care and higher patient satisfaction.

Media contact
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SOURCE Arena