The healthcare field faces some of the most monumental challenges of any industry when meeting its goals. In a system stretched to its limit, attracting, recruiting, and retaining the right employees often means the difference between success and failure.
And while profitability is a significant aspect of this practice, much more is at stake. The healthcare industry requires meticulous adherence to compliance and standards of practice. Without efficient job description management, patient lives are at risk, as is business continuity.
Job descriptions must be accurate, up-to-date, and well-written to ensure the highest possible standards of care and compliance in healthcare environments. Failing to land the right talent, making a bad hire, offering inadequate compensation, or dropping the ball in any human resources scenario could impede progress and innovation. It might also lead to a breakdown in the organizational structure or negatively impact health outcomes—and these are just a few possible scenarios.
Job description management software has become an essential tool for HR, helping healthcare organizations transform cumbersome processes, reduce risk, achieve results faster, meet talent acquisition goals, and satisfy some of the most stringent compliance mandates.
Compliance Concerns in Healthcare HR
In healthcare, Joint Commission surveys are conducted once every two to three years. The frequency of their largely unannounced visits depends on the type of facility, but they are mandatory to ensure compliance standards are being met.
While Joint Commission accreditation is not mandatory, many healthcare organizations seek it out because it builds public confidence in the quality and consistency of service delivery. A Joint Commission accreditation can help organizations fulfill regulatory requirements in some states.
Often, during a Joint Commission survey or Department of Health audit, the first piece of documentation requested by the surveyor is a signed job description. Such documents are an essential requirement for most hospitals, and as such, they must be updated, maintained, and made available for review when needed.
Auditors also want to see that employees meet the qualifications of the job, which may include education, licenses, certifications, competencies, essential functions, and physical requirements. The job description is a dynamic document that articulates these details to management, HR, and the employee themselves.
The Joint Commission requires that all employees know and understand their roles and responsibilities. The organization must also have a system in place for training and competency assessment to ensure quality control and reduce risk.
Detailed, accurate job descriptions demonstrate that the organization meets these requirements. Similarly, in the case of the Department of Health (DOH), job descriptions can be used to verify that employees are adequately trained and fully aware of their obligations within the realm of the job.
The Risk of Non-Compliance or Non-Acknowledgement
Healthcare organizations that do not meet the Joint Commission or DOH standards may be subject to penalties or sanctions. These can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the severity and risk posed.
Additionally, if the violation is severe enough, the organization could lose its accreditation status, which can seriously affect the organization and the patients in its care. Still, in the big scheme of things, the cost is only one consideration.
Non-compliance will almost certainly affect the organization’s public image and reputation, eroding patient trust, restricting future funding opportunities, and impacting the continuity of the facility in question.
The solution is to maintain job descriptions accurately, ensure all industry compliance mandates are satisfied and provide relevant parties (including the employee) with a detailed accounting of job requirements, competencies, and expectations. And while this may seem elementary, many organizations continue to struggle with the task, especially when multiple stakeholders are involved.
A job description management solution like JDXpert supports HR by keeping job descriptions up-to-date, consistent, and compliant. Job data and job descriptions are maintained securely in the cloud, enabling real-time collaboration and ensuring job information is readily available when needed or requested.
Always On: 24/7/365
Healthcare organizations rely on licensed professionals around the clock, which requires a high level of regulation from state and other agencies.
Many managers have 50-100 or more direct reports and can’t efficiently or effectively manage job descriptions due to the complexities of such an environment. As the healthcare landscape changes, new competencies have been added to existing jobs, and new skills are required to manage an increasingly digitized framework.
In an industry facing a dire shortage of clinical professionals, job descriptions must be created, developed, and maintained quickly to ensure no opportunities are missed. New roles are constantly being added to meet patient needs and satisfy changing expectations ranging from telehealth to payer structures, financial management, leadership, digital healthcare, new technology, remote healthcare, business expansion, scale, and more.
Job description management software helps healthcare organizations respond quickly and gain agility, even in the face of constant change. Without reliable tools and processes to support transformation, many facilities would face challenges in meeting patient needs in the short term or moving into a sustainable future.
The Time is Right for Job Description Management Transformation
HR’s job is complex and fraught with constant change. And while this is true for every industry, healthcare carries added risk due to a high-compliance environment, intense competition, and rapid innovation. Let’s also not forget that human lives hang in the balance—a significant detail that informs every decision throughout the organization.
Job description management has long been viewed as one of the most inefficient and cumbersome functions in HR. Some of the biggest companies in the world still keep their job descriptions in Word documents, on shared drives, or siloed in an employee’s computer. Workflows like this lead to oversights, mistakes, omissions, and delays, and often put the company at significant risk of non-compliance.
Additionally, most companies are stretched thin in every department, so it’s essential to optimize daily processes, automate where possible, and reduce the potential for errors, delays, and backtracking.
With so much riding on this task, it’s critical to have the right tools to ensure efficiency.
JDXpert is a comprehensive job description creation and management tool that solves many of the issues we’ve outlined today. Many of our customers report a 50% reduction in time dedicated to creating, reviewing, and updating job descriptions—and that’s valuable time that can be allocated elsewhere to grow the business, improve the employee experience, or drive healthcare innovation.
Typically, an HR department uses several tools to manage benefits, inform compensation, collect employee data, and manage recruitment. Accurate job descriptions are essential to ensure success, and when job descriptions are integrated into these workflows, the results are immediately more consistent and predictable.
A job description maintenance and management tool like JDXpert is essential for today’s healthcare HR departments as it accelerates timelines, enables scale, and improves organizational agility. Once deployed, JDXpert improves some of the most critical and fundamental tasks HR faces, not the least of which is the ongoing battle for talent.
As individuals, we are often counseled to address the root of our health concerns if we want to achieve optimum results. Healthcare facilities are no different. Job description management transformation is the remedy, helping them uphold their commitments to patients, their families, and the greater healthcare community.
Contact the JDXpert team to learn about job description management solutions built for HR professionals in the healthcare industry.