Interim Healthcare Leaders Best Practices
Have you found yourself in a place where top healthcare leadership is nearing retirement? Do you have temporary holes due to resignations, organizational changes, etc? Do you have projects that require special expertise? If you are dealing with these issues, it’s essential to have the right interim healthcare leaders fill your positions. Your teams need stability and guidance. And many organizations don’t have the resources to oversee these types of roles with the focus and experience necessary. This is where interim leadership can make a difference. Interim leaders can provide guidance in an organization for a period of time while a permanent replacement is identified and vetted for the position.
Healthcare industry turnovers are high compared to other industries. A 2018 article at DailyPay found that “a study by National Healthcare Retention & RN Staffing Report, the average hospital turnover rate in 2017 was 18.2%, which is the highest recorded turnover in the industry for almost a decade. Since 2013, the average hospital turned over 85.2% of its workforce.”
In some cases the interim C-level manager, Revenue Cycle Director, Clinical Director may fill the position permanently — industry research shows this happens approximately 30% of the time.
How do you find the right candidates for interim healthcare leaders ?
An article at RevCycle Intelligence observes that successful senior leaders “are visible and convey the organization’s goals, mission, and vision; that employees feel confident in their leadership; and that employees feel senior leaders care about and value their contributions.” Some of the best practices used include, “town hall meetings, webinars, roundtable discussions, and emails sent directly to staff allow senior leaders to engage with employees while addressing concerns.”
Revint has found that when clients use vetted candidates that are referrals through our network of employees, partnerships, and clients, they then work with experienced candidates that have specialized skills and knowledge. And strong leadership skills drive the results our clients seek. We know that an important factor is how interim managers fit different work cultures and ensure the right fit for unique challenges of your organization. Read more about our advisory services here.
When one system’s largest hospital needed help to address high length of stay (LOS), they turned to Revint to provide an interim care management leader. Revint’s Interim Director of Care Management brought 20 years of experience to the team and implemented LOS practices and procedures that were subsequently rolled systemwide across all the network’s acute care hospitals. In this limited interim engagement, Revint helped reduce LOS, establish system care management regulatory compliance expectations, implement a system care management model for practice standardization, and enhance EMR and care management information systems–systemwide.
It’s best to think in terms of opportunity to further hospital goals when you hire interim healthcare leaders. As explained in the Becker’s article about stopgap and acting managers, “hiring an interim clinical director, manager, or executive can be the perfect opportunity to tackle quality improvement and patient safety projects.” The managers may be “charged with overhauling struggling departments and looking at the supply chain, inventory, efficiency, staffing, customer service, etc.”
