How Houston Methodist partnered with Prolucent Health to develop a single systemwide flexible staffing strategy.

Introduction

Healthcare has been facing workforce management challenges like shortages in staff, higher turnover rates, compliance, and varying localized market conditions. It has become crucial to balance costs and integrate technology for efficient operations to ensure employee and system well being. This case study explains how Prolucent Health addresses these challenges by providing a platform that streamlines flexible labor management through neutral, proprietary technology and expert services.

About Houston Methodist

HM is a leading regional academic medical health system in Texas, with over 30,000 employees. It is anchored by its academic medical center, Houston Methodist Hospital (HMH). HM owns and operates 6 other acute care hospitals and a network of 350 affiliated healthcare facilities throughout the greater Houston area, which is the 5th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. HMH has been named the #1 hospital in Texas by U.S. News & World Report for 12 years in a row and is rated as one of the best hospitals in the U.S., with 9 specialties ranked in the top 20 nationally.

Situation

HM is located in the heart of the Texas Medical Center, which is one of the most competitive and concentrated healthcare markets in the U.S. The Texas Medical Center consists of 61 unique healthcare organizations collectively employing over 106,000 employees. In this environment, Houston Methodist Hospital continually competes for highly qualified RNs and allied health professionals with its neighbors including, M.D. Anderson, Baylor College of Medicine, St. Luke’s Health, Memorial Hermann, The Texas Heart Institute, and University of Texas Health. Like many health systems, HM was forced to use a high volume of travelers during the pandemic, and that continued post-pandemic, driven by increasing competition in its market. Prior to that, HM had not historically used a lot of flexible labor and did not have a system-wide IRP or an MSP in place to help manage travelers.

The sustained traveler utilization led HM to determine that it needed a comprehensive system-wide flexible workforce strategy, IRP operation, and technology to actively recruit and deploy internal and external flexible resources in an optimal manner. HM leadership determined this was necessary to meet the following key strategic objectives:

Build a scalable and sustainable flexible workforce model designed for a future that will increasingly rely on the ability to continually hire and deploy a growing mix of flexible workers to compete in the Houston market

Expand the HM employee value proposition to include a portfolio of flexible work opportunities that help recruit and retain permanent employees that are looking for something other than unit-based full-time work.

Implement a vendor-neutral MSP to actively manage staffing agencies and put standardized contract labor compliance processes in place across HM, in a manner that had not previously existed for the health system.

The Approach

HM operates a system-wide internal resource pool with over 300 RNs working as per-diem or full-time internal travelers. HM partnered with Prolucent to accomplish and sustain all the above goals. Specifically, Prolucent provides the following services and technology to HM:

IRP Services and Resources

Internal Resource Pool (IRP) strategy, infrastructure development, technology, and ongoing expansion and operational support. These services are delivered using proprietary technology and healthcare hiring market data and a team who pioneered healthcare contingent labor management.

Flexible Workforce Platform

Deployment of the Prolucent FWP to enable HM to manage all aspects of its IRP and external contract labor utilization, with integrations to all core workforce systems including time & attendance, scheduling, and ERP.

Support with IRP Recruitment

Recruitment marketing services, technology and analytics to help expand and improve recruitment of flexible workers. Everything integrated seamlessly with ATS and other HRIS systems.

Vendor-neutral MSP and VMS

Services and technology to manage staffing agencies and all other aspects of contingent labor requisition, fulfillment, compliance, payments and reporting. Cutting-edge technology and expert services deployed to prioritize internal workers before outside agency.

Key Challenges

Some key challenges that the HM and Prolucent teams are collectively addressing in the design and management of this IRP include:

Building an IRP to float across hospitals with high variation in acuity and services

Houston Methodist Hospital is a leading academic medical center, while its other 6 hospitals are community hospitals with lower acuity and varying services. The IRP team has addressed this by actively recruiting and deploying clinicians who have the backgrounds and desire to work in a variety of environments, in addition to developing an orientation, training, compliance and experience/skills matching model in which staff are prepared and monitored for success and growth in all environments.

Implementing a system-wide IRP and flexible workforce strategy in an environment with no legacy float pool or legacy flexible workforce technology.

While it may seem like an advantage to start with a clean slate, it creates a challenge in that there is no established flexible workforce processes, baseline, or data to build off in establishing the new IRP and flexible workforce program. The Prolucent team has deep experience implementing new system-wide workforce initiatives across large decentralized IDNs and regional health systems. We’re actively leveraging this experience to work with HM leaders to grow and sustain a scalable operational model for the HM IRP, and deploy an MSP for any remaining contract labor utilization to provide tight cost and compliance controls that did not previously exist at HM.

Success Measured

Prolucent is helping HM achieve and sustain all the objectives outlined above through the deployment of its technology and services. This is a highly collaborative and dynamic partnership between the HM and Prolucent teams. Some key results to date include:

Workforce cost savings

over $60M

Automate key flexible workforce processes.

Replace manual Reports with standardized dashboards and automated reports.

Internal Agency Pool Workers

over 300

Identify additional allied and non-clinical categories to bring into the IRP as a next phase.

Collective work to generate sustainable labor savings and a future-ready workforce.

Our Story

Why Prolucent

Workforce is evolving

As much as 50% of the workforce predicted to go flexible...

More Career Control
Explore new specialties
More Flexibility
Earn Extra Money

Employers are responding with:

Leaders lack confidence in the long-term viability and cost of these options.

Agency MSP and VMS
Traditional and Gig agencies
Existing or new core tech
Point Solutions

Best practices of a viable solution

Do they seem achievable with your current options?

Job that appeal to all types of workers
Does not compete with you for talent
Improves costs.
Enhances your core technology systems.

Why we built Prolucent

Gives you the tools to win the workforce.

Engage your entire workforce.
Make you the employer of choice
Reduce labor costs
Enhance your core technology

Prolucent’s transformative solution

A workforce building ecosystem, to address your whole workforce, without rip & replace or margin lost to agencies.

Our Platform

The tools you need to build your whole workforce

Including core staff, internal flexible and external flexible.

Talent Digital Front Door

Recruitment marketing, job search, and applicant experience technology for all your work options for all employment types.

1
Integrated to your ATS
2
Integrated to all your existing, plus new applicant sources.
3
Modern job search focused on candidate experience.
4
CRM tools to promote higher conversion rates and engage past applicants
5
Your jobs promoted in liquid compass marketplace (mobile App, web and 300+ affiliate sites)

Flexible Workforce Platform

We do not profit from employing the workforce you need. We help you “own” flexible labor and build your workforce for the future.

1
Integrated to your Scheduling and Time & Attendance so you can manage flexible staff like you do core stff.
2
Designed to help you build a robust internal agency.
3
Address all specialities for contract and per diem.
4
Manage the entire order life cycle from order management to compliance, to time, invoicing and reporting.
5
Built to help you reduce reliance on outside agency.

Date Engine & MSP Program

Whole-house, data, reporting, product features, and managed services aimed at delivering a lower cost workforce.

1
At Engine analyzes and normalized all data from jobs, orders, workers, interactions, and more to enable for your workforce.
2
Compares core talent acquisition efforts against flexible labor utilization to drive actionable cost reduction strategies.
3
Measures all workforce sources, volume, event and conversion efficacy to drive engagement tactics.
4
Integrate custom data extracts to your core BI reporting.
5
MSP Services to help develop and implement strategies, provide execution support and achieve goals.

Technology Consolidation

Deep two way integrations with your WFM, HRIS and ERP systems not to replace, but to complement, enhance, and consolidate your current workflows.

WHAT WE ACHIEVED

Conclusion

Prolucent Health is focused on streamlining workforce management processes with unique technology and expert services to address staffing challenges, reduce labor costs and optimize staff allocation for the growing flexibility demands of the healthcare workforce. Prolucent’s work allows advancement in recruitment, better management of contingent labor and helps Houston Methodist maintain its high patient care standards. Prolucent health has provided the flexibility needed to adapt to changing demands in healthcare, while making more informed decisions for long term sustainability. This is a highly collaborative partnership between Houston Methodist and Prolucent teams. Our collective teams believe this cannot be a static strategy because of the highly dynamic and evolving nature of today’s healthcare workforce. Our teams work together to actively manage flexible workforce strategies to ensure continued success.