Vendor Management Systems (VMS) streamline and standardize the management of contingent workers across the healthcare organization to reduce costs and increase time saved. Whether it’s Local or Travel, Contract or Per Diem, Clinical or Non-Clinical, a robust VMS will deliver heightened visibility, efficiency, and compliance into your operations. Learn how Lahey Hospital and Medical Center leveraged HWL VMS technology to consolidate contract hiring and monitor contingent workforce performance across the organization.
The job of every nurse at the Critical Care unit at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center is essential. So, when the Critical Care Nurse Manager is faced with a temporary vacancy, she does whatever it takes to find a contract nurse quickly. She calls a rapid response staffing agency and may have a candidate within the week. Desperate for a qualified candidate, the manager complies with the terms and conditions of the agency’s contract. After all, it’s not every day she needs a temporary nurse, and unusual circumstances call for extreme measures. At least, that’s what she thought.
An independent consultant hired to analyze operations at Lahey quickly discovered that similar scenarios were occurring regularly throughout the network. When faced with hiring contract workers like nurses, allied health, non-clinical, IT, etc., managers each had their own methods of sourcing candidates—revealing inconsistency, inefficiency, and accompanied by a high price tag.
“We had no way to track which vendors we were using or how much we were spending,” explained Contract Staffing Specialist Kaley Porter. “There was no way to ensure compliance or even know who was working on site.”
At this point the recommendation was simple—Lahey was advised to consolidate contract hiring at the corporate level; however, this would be no easy task. Lahey would need outside expertise and advanced technology to successfully implement a new approach to sourcing, contracting, paying, and reporting temporary staffing needs. The team at Lahey launched an RFP process to identify the best VMS for their organization.
“We knew we wanted a solution that was vendor-neutral,” Porter explained. “It had to be user friendly with minimal impact on the managers.” The HWL solution was just what they were looking for. “We were blown away by the HWL technology. It was clean, easy to use, and had every capability we needed.”
Read, ‘The Importance of Vendor Neutrality.’
HWL partnered with Lahey to implement the VMS that would allow Lahey to centralize all contract staffing. The process began with a market rate analysis and vendor evaluations. The opportunities for savings were immediately clear. Importantly, HWL identified that the managers were over-using ‘rapid response’ agencies and unnecessarily paying higher rates. The VMS would allow them to quickly source candidates using a variety of agencies, creating competition and cutting costs significantly.
HWL also helped Lahey to move to a standard contract that eliminated payment to the vendor for orientation costs, Lahey would save an estimated $300,000 over the first year. This change would also shorten the length of orientation and incentivize vendors to extend current contingent staff rather than constantly introducing new staff.
“The implementation was easy and seamless,” says Porter. “HWL did all the heavy lifting, and now we are reaping the benefits.”
The early predictions about significant savings were correct. In less than a year since going live with the VMS, Lahey saw a total savings of $1.57 MM.
HWL’s VMS is built on a next-generation platform with modern architecture which allows for custom workflows, easy integrations with client systems, and robust Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting. By automating the entire process HWL VMS provides visibility that can lower costs, ensure compliance, and provide standardization and consistency for the management of various groups of contingent workers.
In addition, our VMS is built with a state-of-the-art integration platform, so we can easily collect real-time data from agency and client systems. This expedites the process of getting time and expenses approved which promotes error-free invoicing.
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Request a demo today or contact the HWL team at 833-HWL-INFO (833-495-4636) for more information on our cutting-edge VMS.
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