A new study by Health eCareers found that nearly one-third of healthcare recruiters in the U.S. rank employee turnover as their greatest staffing concern this year and say hiring the best healthcare employees is only half the battle – once you have them, you need to keep them.
Turnover in hospitals has high numbers and results in high costs in the industry. According to 565 healthcare employer respondents in Health eCareers’ 2015 Healthcare Recruiting Trends Survey, almost 30 percent expect that they will have more job openings in 2015 than last year, and 45 percent expect to have about the same. But 43 percent of respondents say finding qualified talent is their number one obstacle.
Retention is the Solution
Employee retention should be the first line of defense to combat the challenges created by turnover and is a key strategic imperative for 90 percent of hospitals.
“According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the healthcare unemployment rate is 3.5 percent. Many economists feel full healthcare employment is between two and three percent, so this means we are very close to full employment,” says Bill Thomson, a healthcare staffing expert and account representative at Health eCareers.
This finding raises the question: where will healthcare get its new workers?
Thomson says because most healthcare professionals are currently employed, it’s much more effective and efficient to invest in retention than to go out, recruit and train new employees.
When Infinite Computer Solutions was founded in 1999, it was started with little more than $1,000 and ambition. We launched with a telecom tech focus, as I worked for Verizon and IBM before, and this was the industry I was connected to.
What was clear even early on was the explosive possibility in the healthcare domain. The move from a fee-for-service payment model to outcome-based managed care is driving huge opportunities for companies in this space. We looked to establish ourselves in the industry quickly, made possible by our early telecom successes. We saw that we could leverage the commonalities between the two verticals, including evolving standards, convergence of numerous systems, high transaction volumes, data security concerns, and a larger user base.
When we first started in healthcare, we helped companies by improving existing processes using Infinite’s IP: our first healthcare customer was a Fortune 500 business that administered Medicaid programs in a couple of states. We helped them transition from a legacy Medicaid Management Information System to a more modernized and automated one.
We expanded quickly to take advantage of the other exciting developments in the Healthcare space that was driving patient-focused care. For example, soon after that first customer, we also helped another develop an electronic medical record/electronic health records product, implemented across various providers in the U.S.
We’re especially excited and focused on the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) trend for patients that need chronic and acute care. We’ve had our proudest successes providing technology that helps continue the link between doctors and their patients outside a hospital environment, leveraging electronic health records to make it easier for patience to receive care from home and allowing doctors easy access to complete patient history.
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator Pitch
Qlik delivers solutions that bring the best out of the people that use them, tools that work at their speed and across their teams. Thus, Qlik sets out to build a new breed of visual analytics and data discovery solutions that are naturally intuitive, that don’t place artificial limitations on what can be analyzed but instead encourage freeform analysis, and that can be readily embraced across the organization. Simply put, our focus is to bring insights and clarity right to where they deliver the most value: the point of decision.
About Statement
Qlik is a leader in data discovery delivering intuitive solutions for self-service data visualization and guided analytics. Approximately 34,000 customers rely on Qlik solutions to gain meaning out of information from varied sources, exploring the hidden relationships within data that lead to insights that ignite good ideas. Of these customers, Qlik serves thousands of healthcare providers spanning hospitals, nursing and residential care facilities, and ambulatory services worldwide have overcome business intelligence challenges to unlock insights that significantly improve care.
A Baton Rouge, La.-based data company has set its sights on Jackson, Mississippi, announcing it will build a technology center that, in part, will house one of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s fastest growing services – telehealth.
UMMC has entered into a lease agreement with Venyu Solutions, LLC, which will construct a stand-alone, 16,000-square-foot facility to accommodate the increase in the services UMMC’s Center for Telehealth provides to hospitals, clinics, corporations and patients across the state. The lease will begin on or around July 1, 2016.
The Venyu Technology Center will be constructed at the site of the former McRae’s department store on the corner of Meadowbrook Road and State Street in the Fondren neighborhood. In addition to the new building, existing structures such as the former McRae’s building will be renovated to host a data center for Venyu, with plans for other businesses in the future.
“Throughout the years, Venyu has provided data center services and other critical services to many health-care organizations, but few have embarked upon such an innovative approach to delivering medical advice and care,” said Scott Thompson, founder and CEO of Venyu. “We are proud the University of Mississippi Medical Center has selected our new Technology Center in Jackson to help host their telehealth operations. We greatly look forward to the positive impact these new services will have within the community.”
The technology center site falls in line with a health-care corridor that’s been lauded by state leaders.
“Mississippi is a national leader in telehealth, and today’s announcement marks an important step toward even more innovation and development,” Gov. Phil Bryant said. “We are not only growing the medical corridor in the Jackson metro area, we are ensuring we have the infrastructure in place to develop new health-care solutions that can improve the lives of Mississippians.”
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator Pitch
TigerText is a secure messaging app for the enterprise. It keeps communications safe and improves workflow by providing end-to-end encryption and ephemerality via its real-time messaging platform.
About Statement
TigerText provides secure, real-time messaging for the enterprise, empowering organizations to work more securely. TigerText’s encrypted messaging platform, which keeps communications safe, improves workflows and complies with regulations in industries like healthcare, finance and government, was developed to address the security needs, BYOD policies and message restrictions in the enterprise. More than 5,000 facilities and four of the top five largest for-profit health systems in the nation rely on TigerText to comply with HIPAA and replace unsecured SMS text messaging that leaves protected health and other confidential information at risk. TigerText was launched in 2010 and is based in Santa Monica.
Founder’s Story
Brad Brooks is the CEO of TigerText, the leader in secure mobile messaging for the enterprise, and the co-founder of Whisper, an anonymous social app that lets people share confessions and secrets that garners more than 3 billion page-views per month. Brad invented the notion of ephemeral messaging on mobile devices (for which he has a patent pending) and was a pioneer in the field of “anonymous social,” which is quickly becoming a major counter-movement on the web against Facebook’s identity-based social network.
Founded in 2012 by former home health agency owner Dan Hogan, Medalogix has been recognized by Harvard University, HIMSS and Fierce Healthcare IT as an innovative solution that’s improving America’s Healthcare system. Medalogix currently offers two solutions, Touch and Bridge.
Medalogix offers patient outcome management (POM) solutions that use a combination of predictive analytics, workflows and business intelligence engines to improve quality and reduce costs.
Elevator pitch
We’re a healthcare tech company that provides analytics and workflows to home health providers so they can improve care and reduce costs.
Medalogix currently offers two predictive analytic workflow solutions to home health providers:
Touch, which helps ensure a patient’s successful care episode by identifying patients at risk of transferring off census (i.e. hospital readmission), falling or who would benefit from an additional care episode. After identification, Touch then automates a clinical team’s patient touchpoints to encourage the best care and cost outcome.
Bridge, identifies which patients would benefit from hospice care and then offers a workflow to help clinicians have the right end of life conversation with the right patient at the right time.
Founder’s story
Dan Hogan
Prior to founding Medalogix, Dan Hogan owned and operated a home health agency. As the industry moved toward digital patient records, he realized there was an opportunity to analyze those streamlined data sets to detect health risks the human eye might miss. He researched to find a tool that could do this, and came up empty handed. He decided to take matters into his own hands and incorporated Medalogix in February 2009.
Marketing/promotion strategy
Currently, Medalogix integrates with leading home health and hospice EMR. We market to their users through webinars, industry conferences and referrals through existing satisfied Medalogix users.
Girish Navani is CEO and co-founder of eClinicalWorks, an electronic health record company exceeding in the B2B field since 1999. Under the leadership and foresight of Navani, the company is expanding its services to B2C with the launch of healow – an app for patients to easily find new doctors, schedule appointments online and access their personal health records.
Here, Navani speaks about his path to eClinicalWorks, he offers his expert insight on EHRs and their benefits to healthcare, and he speak of likely trends that will continue to change the healthcare landscape.
Tell me your story. About how you got here, how you developed your technology and the reasoning for a private company set up?
We wanted to use technology as a way to completely transform the healthcare delivery model to streamline processes, prevent errors and provide easily accessible information to both providers and patients. Not only was our primary goal to make doctors’ jobs easier by providing them with a way to operate more efficiently, but we also wanted to improve the patient experience.
I’m a strong believer in keeping my company private and concentrating on building a solid product. Selling shares and depending on investors means that they will always have a say in how we conduct our business. We use our profits to continue building our company and our products.
What about the leadership inside the company? Is it true the no employees have titles? What’s the reasoning?
I have an open-door policy, which allows the opportunity for anybody to approach me to ask questions and brainstorm ideas. Over time, I’ve learned to listen more. I’m okay with second guessing my own decisions and receiving feedback from my colleagues, even if what they say is “no.”
Yes, our employees do not have titles, but instead, the whole company is team-based with team leaders being the only leadership position. Employees’ careers grow with bigger projects. I think titles are self-fulfilling and short-term objectives that people quickly get tired of. With a team-based structure, employees can work together to achieve successful results instead of individuals striving for the next title.
What drew you to healthcare? Why does it stand out for you?
I have always worked in technology, and in 1999, I heard a lecture in Geneva about using wireless computing in healthcare and the idea of “connected healthcare” really stuck with me. I loved the idea of a doctor and patient sitting in the doctor’s office reviewing charts on a tablet instead of pieces of paper, so I wanted to build a technology that connects all parties involved in healthcare, including the doctor, patient and insurance company.
DataMotion, an email encryption and health information service provider (HISP), offers the results of its third annual survey on corporate email and file transfer habits, revealing significant security risks. While companies in all industries increasingly have put security and compliance policies in place – nearly 90 percent of all respondents affirming that in 2014 (compared to 81 percent in 2013) – the growth is largely from healthcare entities.
More than 97 percent from the industry report their organizations as having policies in place, compared to 90.4 percent in 2013. However, challenges remain for healthcare when it comes to implementing these, ranging from low employee comprehension to policy violations. Additionally, a lack of encryption, risks in mobile device usage and low awareness of Direct Secure Messaging (Direct) pose serious issues for the highly regulated industry.
DataMotion polled more than 780 IT and business decision-makers across the U.S. and Canada. In particular, the survey focused on individuals who routinely work with sensitive data and compliance regulations in a variety of industries including healthcare, financial services, education and government.
More than 300 respondents were from healthcare. Key insights/comparisons on the industry include:
Healthcare Security and Compliance Policy: Gains Undermined by Implementation Failure
36 percent of healthcare respondents said within their entity, security and compliance policies are at most only moderately enforced.
81 percent of all respondents said employees/co-workers either occasionally or routinely violate these policies. While healthcare fared better, nearly 73 percent admitted the same.
Key to making policies work is ensuring employee comprehension. When asked if they thought employees fully understood these types of policies, more than a third in healthcare said no, just a slight improvement over those from other industries.
When asked about common reasons why policies are violated, 52.7 percent from healthcare said it was because employees were not aware of the policy or that they were in violation. Another 29.1 percent said employees didn’t understand policies. Most troubling,18.2 percent said policies were intentionally violated by employees to get their job done.
These healthcare findings raise a “red flag” whereas key to passing an HHS/OCR HIPAA audit is demonstrating implementation of policies.
Qlik
A Baton Rouge, La.-based data company has set its sights on Jackson, Mississippi, announcing it will build a technology center that, in part, will house one of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s fastest growing services – telehealth.
TigerText
Founded in 2012 by former home health agency owner Dan Hogan, 
DataMotion