Integrating Non-Clinical Employees
Opportunities for non-clinical healthcare workers rise as they become increasingly valuable to patient engagement and care coordination. As COVID-pressures strain the clinical practices and resources, additional responsibilities will migrate to non-clinical staff members to pursue efficiencies and cost savings.
Approximately half of all healthcare workers are in non-clinical roles. Both clinical and non-clinical workers are necessary to achieve highly reliable patient care, health outcomes improvement, and lower per-capita costs. As the value and prevalence of non-clinical roles increases, care must be taken by healthcare leaders to plan for and resolve role conflicts and organizational confusion. The effort will be worth the outcome.
Cost-saving initiatives are no longer the sole responsibility of clinical leaders. One study found that a non-clinical employee-led patient navigation program yields, on average, a tenfold return on investment, with average costs for patients receiving navigation assistance declining by $780 per patient per quarter of care. The study’s health system experienced a cost reduction of $19 million annually for the non-clinician-led initiative.
According to the CDC, with 86% of the nation’s $2.7 trillion healthcare spending dedicated to chronic care and mental health management, similar non-clinical support and management efforts present an opportunity for additional savings. Experience leads us to believe non-clinician support with care coordination, patient education, and navigation support for chronic patients can reduce overall costs. All of these opportunities will benefit non-clinical team members.
An interdependent approach to patient care, using both clinical and non-clinical roles, can improve the efficiency of healthcare delivery. When clinical and non-clinical workers communicate and collaborate effectively, they reduce the potential for error, enhance patient safety, and improve clinical performance. With some hospital stays introducing a patient to more than 50 staff members, care coordination and more concise communication are necessary to achieve zero harm.
Collaboration must occur in a manner that clearly defines complementary roles and broadly shares responsibility through shared goals. Collaboration between clinical and non-clinical professionals increases the sensitivity and awareness to a colleague’s point of view in a way that benefits the patient.
For optimal interdependent task coordination between clinical and non-clinical team members, the presence of role and goal clarity is critical. Every team member must be clear on not only their goal and role but also that of their colleagues.
As senior leaders continue to integrate non-clinical roles in the care continuum, issues such as wage disparity between non-clinical employees and leaders, compared to compensation levels of nurses and physicians, will increase in importance. With the aid of artificial intelligence, the shift of care to the home, and increased patient autonomy, non-clinical roles will increase their value to the evolving care continuum. The value-to-compensation ratio will be significantly affected by these changes in responsibilities.
New opportunities will be created for leaders to manage the collaboration between non-clinical and clinical employees. Creating a “just culture” will produce the necessary psychological safety to allow clinical and non-clinical voices to be heard and appropriately weighted to inform the process improvement efforts of the organization.
Fortunately, the future will hold new opportunities for both clinical and non-clinical roles. The leadership challenge in managing this role evolution will be for leaders to effectively step outside present organizational and management models to embrace the change rather than hold tight to out-of-date mindsets.