HR in Healthcare: An Unrecognized Hero

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

– Michael Jordan

Table of Contents

• Human Resource in Healthcare—The Concept

• Should HR be Industry Agnostic?

• HR Health—The Challenges

• Prioritizing HR Healthcare with Anastomos

Human Resources for Health—The Concept

And who helps keep the tab on? The HR! Certain domains perceptibly work agnostic of industry. HR is one of them. Human Resources (HR) is a multidisciplinary and strategic approach to managing the human workforce that aligns with the organization’s vision, missions, and goals.

The healthcare industry, in essence, is ‘people-driven’. The skills, the clinical eye, compassion, empathy, and personal communication form the epitome of healthcare. Can a sector that is so distinct in its demands and services—dealing with real life and death—afford to misplace its human resources? Well, the reality is that human resources for health remain underdeveloped, disorganized, and often overlooked.

Stay tuned as we dive into the sensational issue of the need for HR in healthcare, the current concepts and scenarios, and how Anastomos, as a digital platform, can revolutionize the healthcare HR concept.

Should HR be Industry Agnostic?

We firmly believe YES! HR is the linchpin of any organization, and their duties go beyond regular recruitment and layoffs. Here are some of the roles and responsibilities of HR:

• Selection and Shortlisting of Candidates

• Onboarding Documentation

• Formal and Informal Communication with the Employees

• Aligning the Employees with the Protocols of the Organization

• Professional Development of the Workforce

• Mental Wellness of the Staff

• Managing Performance Indicators of the Workforce

• Managing Disputes and Discipline

• Ensuring Smooth Allotment of Compensation and Benefits

• Managing Transitions and Resignations

• Bridging the Communication Between the Managers and the Resource

Healthcare as an industry is unique because it deals with lives. For optimal patient care, both the medical workforce and the patients require seamless operations.

Healthcare workers are skilled, yet they suffer significant stress when dealing with life-threatening circumstances. The industry operates around the clock, servicing different medical specialties. To meet staffing demands successfully, human resources for health needs to have detailed knowledge. Specialized training is required for healthcare HR specialists due to the industry's peculiarities, which necessitate skills beyond basic HR procedures.

Subspecializing in HR health is recommended as a win-win approach for the sector as well as HR professionals.

HR Health—The Challenges

If we were to draw analogies between conventional HR strategies and human resource management in healthcare, on the face of it, things may feel similar. However, there are minute differences that can make or break the functioning and services of a health facility.

A study published in Human Resources for Health, 2021, showed the following statistics:

It assessed the health workforce in India, estimating a total stock of 5.76 million health workers, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and traditional practitioners. However, the active workforce is significantly lower at 3.12 million. The density of doctors and nurses varies between stock and active estimates, both falling well below the WHO threshold.

The Deductions:

• Disparities in distribution across states, urban-rural areas, and sectors were evident.

• Inadequate qualifications and underutilization of qualified professionals were identified.

• These findings underscore the need for comprehensive reforms to address workforce shortages, qualifications, and effective utilization to meet healthcare demands.

To summarize, the present HR concept in health and wellness has these potential drawbacks, that were exacerbated by COVID-19:

Here is a quick understanding of the challenges in HR in medical field and how they can be tackled:

• Shortage Of Healthcare Workers, Especially Specialists

A recent report (2021) from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that India must have a minimum of 1.8 million physicians, nurses, and midwives to meet the basic requirement of 44.5 healthcare workers per 10,000 people by the year 2030. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the severe deficiency of healthcare personnel within India's healthcare system.

Thus, tapping the right hands for your health organization would need planning and research—that is best done by an HR expert.

• Misaligned Staff and Organizational Protocols

Recruitment protocols and orientation programs are important. The HR in hospital is adept at doing this.

Word-of-mouth hiring, recommendations, and poor documentation of healthcare staff often end up in the actions, behaviors, or practices of employees within an organization that is not in harmony or agreement with the established procedures, guidelines, or goals of the organization.

Who suffers? Your company and its services.

• Lack of compliance with Regulations

Legal and informal documentation of a healthcare organization’s workforce is crucial. With the country still battling the concept of medical registrations and policies that vary in each state, the HR in healthcare would ensure that the hired employees fulfill the necessary governmental rules and are thoroughly documented. This job becomes even tougher for international applications and hiring as the legalities for the healthcare workforce vary in every country.

• High Turnover Rates

The term "turnover rate" for the employment sector, refers to the frequency with which employees leave their positions in a certain period of time.

A newsletter reported that the employee turnover percentage in the healthcare and pharmaceuticals sector in India during the January-March quarter stood at 15.67%, while for the October-December quarter, it was 14.11%. Elevated levels of staff attrition can have financial implications for companies, as they must consistently recruit and educate new personnel to occupy vacant positions.

Employee retention is an art and also a need—-and human resources for health play a significant role. Whether it's employee engagement, compensation, and benefits, or continued education, HR in healthcare is the indispensable contact between management and the staff.

• Employee Burnout

Healthcare staff have to deal with everything from deaths and PR issues to legalities. Being an exceedingly one-of-a-kind industry, burnout is common. Emotional and physical burnout, both of which can eventually, negatively impact patient care.

HR in medical field needs to prioritize and strike a certain work-life balance for each aspect of healthcare—doctors, dentists, nurses, paramedics, and technicians.

• Privacy and Security Concerns

The health and wellness industry has the biggest pool of human data—from gene codes to prescribed medications, everything is stored here. As healthcare employees, most will have direct access to such sensitive data. It is the responsibility of HR health to scrutinize the workforce to avoid unwarranted cyberattacks and legal issues.

With some substantial knowledge about HR in healthcare, let’s move forward to understand how ANASTOMOS could play a vital role in making HR health a hero.

Prioritizing HR Healthcare with Anastomos

Anastomos envisions adding technological finesse to the healthcare industry along with a human touch. Having said that, our contributions to developing the healthcare HR concept have the following features:

• Providing A Platform for HR in Healthcare

Human resource management in healthcare is a subtle yet unexplored field. As a platform that is by the medics, for the medics, we understand the inside-out of the industry.

Our software appoints a personal guide to cater to your unique needs and has one of the most diverse databases for the healthcare task force in the nation. Whether you are looking for a trained HR in healthcare or are an HR professional looking to be hired by some of the biggest corporate giants in medicine and health tech, we can help you lock a suitable match.

• Streamlining the Recruitment Process in Healthcare

The internet's impact surpasses all previous human innovations, infiltrating every aspect of life. However, not all sectors exploit this technology's potential. Human resources for health, for instance, remain underutilized.

Consider a medic looking for work; they rely on word of mouth and may miss appropriate positions in the process. This is nothing but a ‘skill gap’ and no tool in India currently provides comprehensive job opportunities or hospital insights, that are customized with personal guidance. Amidst a healthcare skill gap, discontented doctors seek solutions.

Anastomos is one such dynamic product that offers comprehensive information to bridge this gap. The recruitment process, still manual and antiquated, could also benefit from modern software apps, enabling cross-continental contracting. Incorporating such efficiency into healthcare is imperative.

• Upskilling and Continued Education

Anastomos offers more than recruitment and career counseling; this brainchild of some of the best clinicians in the country is enriched with the latest news from industry experts. Ours is an ever-evolving platform that encompasses clinical health, to PR skills, and business growth.

In Summary

Anastomos is by far the best one-stop solution en route to a career in healthcare thanks to its strong connections in the medical field, sympathetic communication, and quick response times.