A Pennhurst Group Service
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A Pennhurst Group Service
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Contract Services Our organization and its staff have over 25 years of experience in providing contract services to private, and government owned and operated facilities. We can contract with your facility and allow you to shed the use of agency staffing models while you save a tremendous amount of expense. Twenty-five years ago, Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, testifying before a Congressional Committee, was asked who the enemy was. He responded that the enemy was any man whose only concern about the world was that it stay unchanged during his lifetime. We present these modern resources to you as everyone's future performance depend on how you choose to proceed. It is easy to keep doing what you are doing and keep paying out those agency fees until it impacts on the future of your facility and your career. Here are three things we have learned about change in long term facilities and operated systems: 1. Understanding the forces of change. Not all of us view change the same way and even good change is stressful. Most people will do their best to maintain the status quo to avoid the need to go the extra step to be successful. For the leaders in any organization their "change bank" is like Fort Knox and they feel broke if they're not floating in a sea of change. 2. Sailing before the winds of change. Make hay while the sun shines. If your industry is changing, as the operations of large and small long term facilities certainly are, every other facility is suffering too. The more quickly you can respond and adapt, the more likely you are to win. If you are not the person making the change, someone else will impose a change and in that instance you will not be in control of the change. Facilities are wise to bring together their best minds to understand what's going on in terms of future budget restraints and the future inability to act by making excessive budget commitments today. 3. Setting new directions to the future. long term care facilities are so driven by the next State or JACHO survey that they often neglect to look very far to the future. The real winners not only sail before the winds of change but they also chart new courses for others to follow. They are the market makers, the inventors, the change-agents, and the leaders of the new tomorrow. They thrive on change and eat improvement and growth for lunch. Lets look at the annual costs that you will have if you continue the way that you are operating. Remember that as the agency staff work in your facility they tell and remind your employees how much more they are being paid. Most of your employees are loyal, but how can they justify doing the same work and being paid 50% less? The agency employee also has a vested interest in recruiting away your employees since they obtain bonus payments from some agencies to do so. You have to stop this vicious cycle of employee turnover, or your budget will be bloated quickly. With Pennhurst permanent staffing, our people want their contracts renewed and will not "brag" about their rates so that those contracts are, in fact, renewed by a happy long term facility administration. We will take each of the three major employee classifications and look at what your costs may be at this time, your costs if you keep using agency staffing and finally what your costs would be if you contract with Pennhurst for permanent staff positions. The chart below assumes that the CRNA pay rate you are paying now is $8.00 per hour. The lower line represents your estimated costs for 6 FTE's assuming 100% staffing. The top line represents agency rates for the same amount of staffing. The middle line represents Pennhurst contracting costs to your facility. You can estimate the costs by determining how many FTE's or fractions of FTE's you use on an annual basis with an agency. Over the year your facility will save over $60,000 by going with Pennhurst in this example and more importantly you will be at 100% staffing.
Lets look at the cost savings in using Pennhurst to provide LPN's using the same type of graph.
Using this many FTE's can save over $100,000 each and every year! But lets also look at the RN chart model below.
Although most long term facilities would not use this many RN FTE's, this model shows that there is a savings of nearly $200,000 by using Pennhurst to staff your long term facility. You can estimate your savings by calculating the number of FTE's you have used. Remember that because of the shortage of nursing staff, your usage will undoubtedly increase in the coming year. The cost for such long term contract services are certainly less than agency rates and have the added advantage of helping your facility recruiting efforts by providing an environment for prospective employees that "have no current shortage of staff". The contract services that we provide are designed to solve your staffing problems in a cost effective and permanent manner. We have found over the years that the best way to obtain quality staff that provide continuous services is strangely enough to contact people who are not looking for a job! The simplistic approach of placing an advertisement in a nursing journal and awaiting response, simply does not work to provide 100% guarantees. Responses to advertisements have a long time to complete to recruit as well as yielding numerous responses from people who have elected to leave their current employment on a precipitous basis. We have found that by screening applications personally and being in close touch with each individual’s personal goals we are able to recruit professionals who are doing quite well at their current positions but are seeking to broaden their horizons by joining our group at your facility. In this way we obtain long term stable staff that have a commitment to your facility. Nationwide in the year 2000 it is a brutally competitive healthcare labor market. There are an estimated 30 million jobs available in healthcare on a nationwide basis. This is further complicated by a published annual turnover rate of 20% in healthcare. We avoid turnovers and achieve stability of staff by paying a fair wage and respecting our providers. Recruiters ranging from large placement agencies to basement home office operators have found themselves unable to fulfill from 40 to 60 percent of all their job orders, even when they get 20% of the starting annual salaries as a fee. The one sure way we can guarantee you the 100% completion rate that we have enjoyed is we have an in-house recruitment capacity and we need not rely on outside recruiting agencies. Our recruiting staff have already made preliminary contacts with staff to perform these services but cannot offer them employment until such time as we are given authority to proceed. Upon contract award, our key executive staff will meet with facility representatives to obtain additional information regarding policies in place and will seek any information that will allow more specialized performance of each of the services. The facility staff and supervisors will be given the point of contact representatives name, phone number, pager number and email address with instructions to contact him at any time. The key staff will relate this to our recruiting staff who will formalize offers with candidates . Credentials will be updated, verified and multiple reference letters on each provider will be obtained along with an updated or recently completed application to our group a copy of which is enclosed as Exhibit D. Once the selected staff is approved by our group and then accepted by the facility representatives, the offers of employment will be consummated by our group and scheduling grids for the first month of performance will be completed and forwarded to all parties identified by the facility. Orientation programs will be provided by our regional medical director for all staff prior to their first day of employment at the facility. All positions without exception will be filled beginning day one of the contract. During the period of contract performance on-going quality assurance programs will be performed by our group to ensure that the facility and its consumers are satisfied with the services that are being provided. On rare occasions, despite best recruitment efforts a mis-match or personality issue may arise. In this instance the provider can easily be replaced in short order insuring uninterrupted and continuous services. Regular meetings with facility staff will occur and everyone will be encouraged to provide us with ongoing feedback of their perspective of the performance under this contract. In this way we will obtain feedback that can be used to improve our services. Please contact us so that we may review the details of our programs with you in person. 610-524-2400 Extension #15 Email: info@virtualnursinghome.com or mail; Pennhurst Group Suite 250, 300 N. Pottstown Pike Exton, PA 19341-2239
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