US companies are upbeat about the future, with more focused on investing in future growth than on other strategic priorities and fewer concerned about recessionary trends, according to PwC’s August 2023 Pulse Survey. But talent retention remains a top business risk in the healthcare industry, executives said.
The survey, released last week, reveals a positive mindset among the country’s top executives overall. Although most cited the same nagging concerns from 2022 — an uncertain economy, workforce issues and cyber security threats — fewer said that those factors continue to be direct threats to their businesses.
Reinvention appears to be the new focus. This is particularly true of healthcare leaders, with 44% reporting that the introduction of new revenue streams is a top priority, compared with 24% of business leaders overall. The challenge of embedding new technology into business models was the next most-cited priority, with 29% of healthcare leaders stating that they’ve set their sites on doing so.
But talent drain was cited by 82% of healthcare industry leaders as a “moderate or serious” threat to business, compared with 71% of all executive respondents.
“Severe clinical workforce shortages, combined with increased patient demand, are compounding inflationary pressures,” PwC analysts reported. “It’s little surprise, then, that talent acquisition and retention is the biggest risk to health industry companies.”
The PwC authors noted the large numbers of clinicians who have left their jobs due to stress, burnout and retirement, and data from other sources have shown that there is no healthcare sector hit harder by workforce shortages than long-term care.
According to the American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living, although hospitals lost 32,900 employees between December 2020 and December 2021, skilled nursing and residential care facilities lost more than 145,000 workers. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported a loss of more than 400,000 long-term care sector employees since the start of the pandemic.
In addition, a recent AHCA / NCAL survey of 425 nursing home providers found that 77% of operators face worker shortages and 95% of nursing homes are experiencing difficulty hiring staff despite most offering higher wages and bonuses.
A PwC Behind the Numbers 2024 report said that the economic fallout from such staffing shortages will contribute to a 7% increase in medical costs for 2024.
The solution to better attracting and retaining talent likely will require rethinking traditional workforce and business models, the PwC analysts said. Changes could include investment in “building the talent pipeline, tailoring benefits, redefining the care team and model, and setting an aggressive digital- and automation-led agenda to improve productivity are some strategies,” they wrote in the survey report.
The authors also recommended that executives follow the instincts they’ve shown in this latest survey and lean on technology and innovation investments, such as improving care automation, making use of telemedicine to reduce the need for some on-site resources, and forming tech-led collaborations to improve clinician staffing, diagnosis and treatment.
AHCA / NCAL and LeadingAge also have proposed fixes to the problem in their Care for Our Seniors Act, which encourages nursing home workforce improvements to strengthen and support for frontline caregivers in addition to oversight reforms to make systems more resident-driven, structural modernizations and clinical improvements to enhance quality of care.
