Managing a contingent workforce program is no easy task. Maintaining control over each aspect of the extended workforce necessitates time and organization, regardless of whether your organization consists of one or more medical facilities.
Healthcare facilities are increasingly looking for technology to streamline operations as they become aware of the advantages and drawbacks of employing temporary workers. To effectively manage a contingent workforce program, they look to vendor management solutions (VMS).
The problem is: Which of the available options will have the essential features necessary to accommodate the use cases of hospitals and other medical facilities? To implement an effective contingent labor program, healthcare organizations must have seven essential features in their vendor management platforms.
If you're thinking about buying a VMS, you should make sure it can grow with your business. Your institution's contingent labor program is likely to continue expanding in the future as healthcare organizations increase their contingent staffing percentages. You wouldn't want to select a solution that will require new technology in a year or two to meet your expanding requirements. Depending on your specific requirements, look for a VMS that lets you add new facilities or projects in a centralized or decentralized manner.
While arrangements frequently share comparative functionalities, not all board frameworks are constructed similarly about security. Healthcare organizations must ensure that their technology partner is highly secure because they store a lot of sensitive information in one location. At the very least, a dependable vendor management system should have SOC compliance, penetration testing, ISO certifications, and GDPR/privacy shield.
In addition to securing your data, data retention and auditing are two other aspects that healthcare facilities would want to consider. You must be able to get all the data you need for audits and compliance from a VMS.
Medical facilities require a rate management system that is adaptable and meets their requirements in an environment that is constantly shifting. A solution that can meet the needs of the healthcare industry must be able to set different rate configurations for overtime, on-call, shift differential, and exempt vs. non-exempt overtime.
At Vemsta, we have identified every variation of rates that must be applied to a healthcare worker. This includes having a worker receive different pay rates based on the floor they are working on. To avoid a financial nightmare in the future, check that technology can accommodate all rate types when evaluating it.
Compliance is at the center of medical staffing. When bringing healthcare providers to your facility, peace of mind is essential. While you may be content with your full-time staff's compliance, are you completely confident in the credentials of your contingent workforce?
When looking for a vendor management systems healthcare staffing, look beyond the fundamental compliance management features to ensure that your tool can:
Make requirements specific to the location and/or position. Automate the onboarding process for new employees. Track any equipment distributed to your contingent workforce. Track attachments. Send alerts of expiring compliance.
Because healthcare operates at a rapid pace, your system integrations must keep up. A dependable VMS ought to be able to seamlessly connect to the various systems that medical facilities require on-site. Behind-the-scenes technology known as APIs will assist you in achieving this.
Many automated and time-saving solutions can be made possible by APIs. Some examples include:
As previously stated, healthcare is a highly complex and ever-evolving industry that requires configuration. When evaluating technology, one thing to keep in mind is how difficult it is to make changes on the fly. For capturing specific information, you may need to urgently add new fields to a page.
You need a system that you can quickly modify to prevent such setbacks:
You need to know exactly what kind of data you need and at what level before choosing a VMS. From simple embedded providers to comprehensive reporting suites, vendor management systems offer a wide range of reporting options.
Finding a technology with pre-built standard reports and the ability to add custom data as needed is the best option. You can generate reports for all user types as a result of this. The ability to send reports directly to employees' inboxes, eliminating the need for them to log in, is an excellent additional feature.
Healthcare staffing moves quickly, making it harder to find qualified candidates to fill open positions. You must find a VMS that can help you automate every aspect of your contingent workforce cycle and a tool that can adapt to your needs to ensure a smooth and effective process.
We at Vemsta are aware of the challenges healthcare facilities face in terms of staffing and the technology they require to address them. Your program's efficiency can be increased while compliance, spending, onboarding, and other aspects can be controlled by our technology.
Have a look at our VMS for yourself to see how it works for your healthcare facility. Get in touch with our experts. We'd be happy to show you how our technology can help your contingent workforce program.
Health care workers must operate under unprecedented stresses to deliver first-rate care for less money. Under rising operating costs and regulatory pressures, the need is more critical than ever to employ smarter, leaner systems. At the top of the list as a high-priority system is a Healthcare Vendor Management System (VMS), and it is an essential tool in driving efficiency, compliance, and cost control.
A healthcare vendor management system is a centralized software application that assists health care providers with effectively managing third-party vendors. It consolidates such fundamental activities as onboarding, compliance screening, contract monitoring, and performance tracking. It minimizes manual intervention and enhances visibility.
For example, VMS staffing software is commonly used by HR and clinical teams to manage temporary workers. It helps track licenses, monitor shift allocations, ensure credential compliance, and manage time tracking all from one platform. This level of oversight is crucial for healthcare environments where quality and consistency matter.
Unlike a Managed Services Provider (MSP), which outsources the entire vendor function, a VMS gives healthcare leaders tools to retain control while still benefitting from automation and efficiency.
From drug companies and IT services providers to equipment makers and staffing firms, healthcare organizations work with numerous types of vendors. A VMS introduces order and insight into these relationships, so vendor management can be more strategic and data-driven.
Today's VMS also comes with Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) principles. VRM is all about building improved vendor relationships based on open communication, aligned KPIs, and shared accountability. A few platforms even offer VRM capability as part of their VMS software to promote more value-driven and cooperative vendor relationships.
1. Cost Savings and Lean Operations
2. Real-Time Monitoring of Vendor Performance
An effective healthcare VMS technology also comes with vendor KPI measurement tools. Whether delivery time, error rates, or contract compliance, your performance indicators are always up to date, keeping your vendors in line and informing you with data-driven decisions.
3. Technology Integration That Works
Many health care institutions find integrating solutions such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs) challenging. A vendor management solution can act as a bridge, simplifying onboarding and making technology procedures effortless.
4. Ongoing Improvement
Information gathered with a vendor management solution reveals trends and patterns that would otherwise remain invisible. This results in continuous improvement of financial, clinical, and operational metrics.
5. Competitive Advantage
With a highly competitive healthcare market, good vendor management translates into quicker buying, improved compliance, and improved vendor relationships.
6. Powerful Analytics
Modern VMS staffing software also comes with analytics dashboards built in that track such critical metrics as cost, staffing gaps, and vendor compliance. This helps HR and procurement teams become more proactive.
When considering a VMS technology, prioritize features which advance your growth and compliance objectives:
Vendor Risk Management (VRM) is the foundation of any successful VMS. VRM enables healthcare organizations to recognize, evaluate, and manage probable risks associated with third-party vendors—i.e., compliance, cyber security, and service consistency.
By providing insight into contracts, certifications, and audit trails, a VMS dramatically minimizes non-compliance and service disruption risk.
Vendor management is not possible manually in today's fast-paced healthcare environment. Not only will a healthcare vendor management system be cost-saving but it will also facilitate operational excellence, compliance, and better vendor relationships.
Looking for a trusted partner to help you manage healthcare vendors? Your go-to solution is Vemsta. With innovative VMS staffing software and growth-driven VMS technology, Vemsta allows you to streamline short-term staffing needs and long-term vendor engagements.
Handling a contingent workforce can be both difficult and prolonged. People usually forget about the number of staffing agencies, transactions, and candidates a company uses every day. Healthcare providers try to manage their contingent workforce with efficiency, compliance, and costs in mind, but it is not as easy as pie. Vendor Management Software (VMS) technology fundamentally changes how companies access, manage, and optimize their non-permanent workforce.
This article will break down how VMS software works and how its strategic advantages are beneficial to modern organizations managing contingent workers.
A Vendor Management System (VMS) technology is a cloud-based application used to simplify the whole life cycle of managing third-party staffing vendors and contingent workers. A VMS can take care of all business functionality from requisitioning to onboarding, time entry, and invoicing, create a secured central repository of your workforce data, automate manual processes, and achieve regulatory compliance.
One of the primary benefits of a VMS is visibility. With your workforce data aggregated in one location, organizations are able to track a vendor's performance more closely and have a greater understanding of the talent pipeline as well as spending.
The manual work associated with contingent workforce management can hinder recruitment and increase administrative costs. A VMS eliminates much of the cumbersome, repetitive work associated with such tasks as requisition posting, candidate screening, and onboarding so that HR and procurement team members can spend their time on strategy and planning.
While large organizations will use many (potentially dozens or hundreds) of staffing vendors, a VMS puts all of those vendors in a single system, making management easier and use more consistent. When all legal and financial transactions are integrated into one platform, the organization can better utilize controlling information such as performance measures, identifying poor performers, and avoiding overbilling of services.
Regulatory compliance is often a prime concern while engaging a contingent workforce. Important considerations like labor laws, tax documentation, and worker classification have immense legal and fiscal implications if not followed. VMS software can aid compliance with automated checks and identification, document tracking, and vendor performance scorecards.
The fundamental purpose of VMS is to assist the complete procure-to-pay cycle of contingent labor. Here's how it works during every phase of the lifecycle:
1. Requisitioning and Sourcing Contingent Workers
A hiring manager generates requisitions from the VMS that include the role title, budget, duration, and location. After the hiring manager creates the requisition, it leaves the VMS to travel through the internal approval process. Recruiters find a candidate, schedule an interview, and select the best candidate.
2. Onboarding & Offboarding
After a contingent worker is hired, the VMS will help execute an onboarding plan with background checks, training requirements, and IT/security access. When the job assignment is complete, the VMS will assist in offboarding including returning equipment and deactivating account access in IT/HR systems to mitigate potential security risks.
3. Time & Expense Processing
Contingent workers will enter timesheets and expenses in the VMS platform. The time sheets and expenses will follow automated approval workflows before being processed timely for payment. It will be easier for managers to track one employee's billable hours with automated time reporting and expense tracking with reporting functions to assist with accurate payroll and relevant financial reporting.
4. Compliance Monitoring
A good VMS will incorporate many compliance tools to validate their worker's eligibility, track certification renewals, and alert teams on potential legal risks, thus only assigning qualified, legally compliant workers to projects.
5. System Integrations
Most modern VMS systems will have integrations with other enterprise systems - such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), and payroll systems to allow a seamless shift of data across platforms and to stay away from duplicate entries.
Ready to Streamline Your Contingent Labor?
If you're ready to streamline your contingent labor, whether it is your first VMS or you're transferring from an old system, the right vendor management system has the potential to revamp your workforce operations.
Contact Vemsta today and we can help you work through your challenges using pragmatic, data-driven solutions!
Nowadays, healthcare staffing agencies are considered as partners, going beyond simply offering services for institutions. Still, offering reliable service and keeping clients happy needs more than just handling tasks and using spreadsheets by hand. Here, healthcare staffing software greatly helps improve the process.
By automating different tasks, storing all data centrally, and making things clearer, the latest staffing software lets agencies serve their clients more effectively. Let’s examine the ways this technology boosts relationships with clients in different places.
One of the major reasons clients are dependent on healthcare staffing agencies is due to ineffective communication. If you utilize phone calls, emails, or update records by hand, you may experience errors and long waits. This issue is solved by using software that supports instant communication among healthcare staff.
Because of the openness, clients can count on their partner to be well-structured and attentive.
In healthcare staffing, both pace and reliability matter most. Agency clients that can fulfill assignments rapidly and get the best personnel usually experience a strong advantage and help build a great bond with their clients.
Since these techniques help reduce errors, speed up the process, and improve reliability, clients benefit a lot.
We now need data, rather than choosing to use it. Some healthcare staffing agency software offers advice that allows both the agency and the client to decide more wisely.
Such information allows agencies to offer more than a service, helping clients improve their marketing.
Today’s users hope for personalized and easy-to-use software they can control and that is exactly what modern software provides.
Being able to modify things and working with expediency leads to better reliability and satisfaction among clients.
An agency that has communication issues and manages healthcare staff scheduling by hand chose to switch to a staffing management solution. Within just six months, the number of complaints from clients went down by 40%, and satisfaction went up by 30%. With the automated system and a clear client portal, our clients trusted and continued to use us, increasing our income substantially. The software made operations better, but it really changed the way individuals communicated.
Client relationships take more than luck to form. Proper customized staffing agency software supports and improves trust, prompt replies, and steady service to customers.
Regardless of whether your agency is new or well-established, using the proper software can help you improve your client connections or reach new heights. It includes more than just filling open positions; you should focus on helping your clients excel in every aspect.
Looking to strengthen your relationships with clients using the correct tools? To walk around our staffing solution, contact the Vemsta team.
