hospital staff walking through hallway

How Rapid Onboarding Increases Hospital Revenue

Hospitals are seeing a surge in patients and a loss of revenue. By streamlining processes like visitor management and onboarding contractors and employees, hospitals can focus on securing their facilities, mitigating risks and delivering revenue-driving procedures.

Today’s hospitals are being stretched beyond their limits as they attempt to manage the surge of infections, the influx of new patients, and the need for additional contractors. In addition, they face tougher challenges to secure medical equipment including ventilators and protective gear. Even before the recent challenges brought about by a global pandemic, best-in-class hospitals and clinics were stressed with the issue of managing identities and access rights into their hospitals for medical staff, employees, contractors, medical students, vendors and visitors. Like all other businesses, they also face the new hurdle of validating the health of each employee as they return to work.

According to Gartner, “The COVID-19 pandemic is draining providers’ cash reserves at a much faster rate due to additional staffing, increased paid overtime and sick time, and higher cost to secure medical supplies and equipment. The projected revenue increase from higher patient volumes will not be sufficient to offset the total cost of COVID-19 patients due to increased length of stay and lower reimbursement.” This collision of increased patient volumes, visitor management concerns and high costs are driving much-needed change.

Prioritizing Spend in a New Era of Workplace Security

As a global pandemic drains cash reserves, hospitals can prioritize the deployment of technologies that will streamline organizational costs such as an automated onboarding and visitor management system.

Users can access a self-service portal that confirms they are approved to be in the facility and issues a credential that allows access to the appropriate areas. This eliminates the time and cost previously spent on sorting through spreadsheets to find user information. Additionally, an automated system shifts away from handing out cards to contractors, visitors or new hires and makes sure that an identity is tied to the right person.

Accelerating the process of day-one hiring or rehiring means hospitals can get resources to work faster. Moving away from tedious, error-prone onboarding that typically consists of reviewing multiple documents and manually entering credentials gets staff back to work faster.

Drive Revenue, Keep Staff and Patients Safe

Patient and staff safety should remain a top priority, and screening everyone that enters a facility provides peace of mind. Not only do you ensure that a person should be in a facility, you’re able to create a safer and intuitive user experience that helps to mitigate potential workplace violence. But a manual process is time consuming and prone to human error — which means a breach could cost both money and brand reputation. It’s critical to use the right tools that strike a balance between elevated security measures and a seamless user experience. This will ensure staff and patients are not subjected to repetitive, cumbersome screenings that diminish the overall experience.

What to Consider in an Onboarding System

Once you’ve decided you’re ready to move away from error-prone, manual processes and implement a streamlined, automated onboarding process, consider the following: 1) How are you tying the user and their photo identity together? 2) How are you provisioning the user’s access rights? For example should a contractor have access to only certain areas of a facility, hospital, research lab, etc.? Does a visitor pose a risk if he or she enters a certain area of the hospital? 3) How are you managing medical staff and employee access to various areas of the hospital? How are you confirming that staff is safe and show no signs of illness? 4) What can you do to alleviate the challenges of a new employee’s onboarding process? What are the required user prerequisites?

The HID Healthcare team looks forward to the opportunity to discuss these and other identity and access issues with you. We’re ready to listen to your unique challenges and map out the right solution to meet your needs.

To learn more about rapid onboarding and provisioning technologies that limit risks and help support revenue initiatives, explore the HID Global Smart Healthcare Continuum.

Janette Andler is Director of Vertical Market Development in IAM Solutions. In this role, she works with healthcare organizations across North America to help solve their physical identity and access management challenges. Based in Dallas, Janette has been a member of the security industry for over 12 years.

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