Increasingly, patients are choosing telemedicine—for good reasons. Telehealth appointments are convenient, cheaper, and accessible, and they may even help improve patient care.
But it isn’t just patients who appreciate the benefits of telemedicine. Clinicians enjoy its flexibility and the increased scope of their practice. At the same time, healthcare organizations are aided by telehealth’s efficient costs and extra staffing support.
However, hiring the right telehealth professionals can be a complex undertaking. Ensuring the right hire is vital to ensure patients’ quality of care, but with such a vast talent pool and the uncertainties of remote hiring, it can be hard to know where to start. As you try to fill open telehealth staffing vacancies at your healthcare organization, you’ll want to know some of the most effective tips for attracting highly qualified telehealth clinicians.
4 Ways to Simplify Your Telehealth Staffing Process
If you’re on the hunt for telehealth staff, review our top four tips for finding the right telehealth clinicians for your healthcare organization below:
1. Identify Your Needs and Establish Transparency from the Start
Before you can find highly qualified telehealth clinicians, you need to know what you’re looking for in the first place. For example, telehealth can cover a variety of specialties, so determining whether you need telehealth doctors, nurses, therapists, or specialists will be your first step. Next, determine how much you’re willing to pay telehealth staff and the qualifications a new telehealth staff member should have. You might also want to consider whether your patients need certain language, time zone, or cultural accommodations.
Once you’ve established your telehealth staffing needs and begun the search process, provide applicants with as much information as possible upfront to save time and minimize the potential for misunderstandings. Creating clarity around work roles, wages, and qualifications helps tighten your applicant pool. Even if there are standing uncertainties about the position, establishing transparency helps all parties.
In the same vein, healthcare organizations that use telemedicine moonlighting staffing agencies should maintain transparency with them. Being open about what you’re looking for in a candidate and the compensation you’re willing to offer can help make the hiring process seamless. Since telehealth staffing agencies maintain close relationships with candidates and know their strengths, they’ll be more likely to find the right candidates for your organization when you’re transparent about your needs.
2. Don’t Settle When Hiring for Telehealth
Telehealth medical practitioners must have all the same qualifications as full-time medical clinicians. While health visits are digital, the same foundational principles of practicing medicine remain the same. As a result, you’ll want to avoid hiring clinicians who aren’t a great fit for your organization.
While you might feel pressure to fill gaps quickly, spending a little more time to identify telehealth providers that fit your culture, budgetary requirements, and scheduling needs can be highly beneficial. Telehealth staff who are a better fit for your healthcare organizaiton are more likely to stay at your organization longer and meet your expectations. A telehealth staffing agency can help you find and hire these types of candidates to avoid higher rates of employee turnover.
3. Consider Your Prospective Telehealth Clinicians’ Locations
While telemedicine can connect highly qualified clinicians with patients far away from them, healthcare organizations should still consider location when extending offers to candidates. One of the reasons for this is time zones can vary fairly widely, meaning you’ll want to ensure a candidate who lives in a different time zone can take telehealth appointments at times fitting your organization’s time zone and schedule.
Besides making sure telehealth candidates can meet your scheduling needs, local telehealth clinicians may connect with patients more easily than those based far away. For example, clinicians in local areas may understand a particular region’s population better, including endemic health trends and threats. Patients often feel more comfortable with doctors from their region, and studies have shown those clinicians might provide better care.
That being said, some patients may prefer to seek doctors outside their region. Due to shifting regional legislation and cultural attitudes, patients may want to see clinicians who are more likely to align with their cultural views. Since patients will have varied needs and personal preferences, you may want to prioritize candidates who fill gaps in locations (e.g., if you have no local telehealth clinicians, you may want to prioritize hiring telehealth clinicians located near your organization).
4. Work With Telehealth Staffing Companies
Trying to find qualified telehealth staff on your own can be a long and difficult process. Fortunately, telehealth staffing companies can ensure healthcare organizations receive well-qualified applicants for their positions. When you have a provider of telehealth staff in your corner, they’ll take the time to understand what you want in a candidate and your hiring priorities.
After the telehealth staffing agency speaks with you about your needs and helps you narrow down your job search, they’ll use their network of telehealth clinicians to find qualified candidates. Instead of having to spend lots of time on advertisements, you can trust your telehealth staffing provider to quickly identify candidates and assist with the hiring process. Due to their expertise in telehealth staffing, you can expect an agency to reduce the time it takes to hire new staff that fit your needs.
While looking for a telehealth staffing agency, you can likely benefit the most from those who can also assist with other important telehealth hiring services. For example, a great staffing partner will assist with medical credentialing, billing, and scheduling tasks to take the pressure off your HR team and free them up to focus on other work.
OnCall Solutions: The Top Choice Among Telehealth Staffing Companies
As a medical staffing partner, OnCall Solutions is proud to help healthcare organizations hire highly qualified locum tenens, moonlighting, and full-time telehealth clinicians. With us as your partner for telehealth staffing, you can expect us to work closely with you to understand your needs and connect you with the best-qualified applicants. We also can provide billing, medical credentialing, and scheduling services to streamline the hiring process at your healthcare organization.
Learn more about our telehealth staffing services today. If you’re interested in learning more about our telehealth, locum tenens, and moonlighting staffing service, please reach out to us. Let us help connect you with the motivated and qualified telehealth that can make a difference in your communities.
