With telemedicine offering greater convenience and more affordable care to patients, many healthcare organizations want to increase their telemedicine offerings. Alongside the convenience and affordability of telehealth, it reduces patient wait times, decreases no-show rates, and raises adherence to treatment plans. It’s also very attractive to many clinicians who want to work from home and have a better work-life balance.
While telemedicine offers multiple benefits to patients and healthcare providers, recruiting qualified telemedicine staff has been a challenge for many providers. As the United States faces a shortage of physicians, it’s important you take steps to improve your telemedicine staffing and recruitment strategy.
5 Tips for Telemedicine Recruitment and Staffing
Due to the advantages of telehealth, telemedicine adoption has continued to grow and remained a top priority for many providers. This continued focus on telemedicine has made the hiring market more competitive and led to many providers struggling to recruit qualified telehealth staff.
While there’s a high demand for hiring telemedicine staff, you can attract more candidates by following these five tips for telemedicine recruitment and staffing.
1. Identify Your Main Telehealth Needs and Adjust Your Hiring Criteria to Account for Telemedicine
Before you begin hiring telehealth staff, you’ll need to understand your needs. Telemedicine can cover a variety of specialties and roles, meaning you’ll have to assess whether you need doctors, therapists, nurses, or various specialists to serve your patients best. You’ll also want to consider whether your telemedicine staff will primarily serve patients in your area or those who might need different cultural, language, or time zone accommodations. Based on your current workforce, you could need contract, part-time, or full-time telemedicine staff.
Besides defining these needs to help you find the most qualified staff, you’ll likely want to adjust your hiring criteria. Unlike in-person staff, telehealth staff will work with patients over their phone or a computer. Instead of looking for peer assessments about their abilities or bedside manner, it’s best to place a higher weight on a candidate’s “webside” manner, comfortability using telehealth technology, and ability to diagnose patients over screens. You’ll also want to look for candidates trained or certified in telemedicine.
2. Offer Training and Support to Potential Telehealth Hires
Even when you can find qualified staff who have already worked in telemedicine, you’ll need a training system to get new hires up to speed on your telehealth technology and protocols. While you’ll want to look for those with experience or training in telehealth, many candidates may have only provided in-person care. By having a comprehensive training and ongoing support system in place, you’ll be more likely to attract more candidates and ensure they know how to provide high-quality care via telehealth.
Offering in-depth training and support for telehealth hires can also increase the chance of attracting qualified staff interested in switching to telemedicine. Since many physicians are interested in splitting their time between in-person and telehealth work, a high-quality training program can get them in the door and provide at least part-time assistance for your telehealth needs.
3. Provide Additional Incentives and Flexibility
Many clinicians prefer telehealth work for the greater work-life balance and flexibility it tends to provide. To attract these clinicians, you can offer greater flexibility to new hires, such as allowing them to work from home and choose their own schedules. Some clinicians also enjoy a mix of in-person and at-home work, so offering a hybrid work model can attract more candidates.
Alongside highlighting your organization’s flexibility, you can provide extra incentives to telehealth staff. These incentives could include career development opportunities, additional telehealth training, competitive compensation, public recognition for their work, various benefits, and bonuses. Combining flexibility with incentives can lead to more applicants while also boosting telehealth staff retention.
4. Ensure Your Telemedicine Services Are Easily Accessible for Patients and Staff
Once you’ve identified your main telehealth needs, created a training system, and increased your incentives, you’ll want to focus on improving your telehealth offerings. Since a hard-to-use telehealth interface can turn patients away and make your staff’s day-to-day work more difficult, it’s essential to invest in telemedicine technology with easy-to-use features. Additionally, choosing a telehealth solution with cross-device compatibility can also improve your staff and patients’ experience, as it allows for telehealth access from mobile devices and computers.
5. Work With a Telemedicine Staffing Partner
While you can look for telehealth staff through job boards and other avenues, a telemedicine staffing partner can make recruitment and management of telehealth staff much easier. During the recruitment process, a telemedicine staffing partner should first speak with your team about your hiring needs and help you narrow down your hiring priorities. Next, they’ll use their network of telehealth professionals to help you hire clinicians who fit your needs and qualifications. Their network also ensures you can fill positions faster and receive high-quality candidates.
After they help place staff at your organization, a great telemedicine staffing partner can also assist with other key telehealth services. For example, an excellent partner can often help with your scheduling, credentialing, and billing needs. As a result, your organization can focus on other matters instead of on hiring and managing telehealth staff.
OnCall Solutions: Telemedicine Staffing Services
If you need help with telemedicine staffing recruitment, OnCall Solutions has you covered. With a network of over a million clinicians and physicians of any specialty, we’re a leading medical staffing partner ready to serve all your telehealth staffing needs. When you need staff, our team can assemble on-demand, custom clinician and physician teams based on your market and specialty requirements. We also offer services related to clinician oversight, malpractice insurance, billing, scheduling, and credentialing to make managing telehealth staff easy.
Learn more about our telemedicine staffing solutions today. If you’re ready to get started or have any questions, please contact us.
