The Pulse of Progress: Professional Recruitment and Staffing Strategies for Healthcare IT

Working in the healthcare field as an IT recruiter provides a unique opportunity to ensure people get the treatment and support they need to be healthy even though you won’t provide direct patient care. The healthcare field could not provide services today without electronic health records, top-notch cybersecurity measures, and the ability to see patients virtually, in many cases. These are just a few of the important ways IT staff contribute to patient care in the healthcare field. 

Like all IT-related industries, it can be challenging to find quality talent to fill these important roles. Skills gaps and talent shortages make healthcare IT roles like systems administrators and software engineers hard to fill at times. This post will provide some strategies to make healthcare IT recruiting easier and more effective. 

Emerging Trends in Healthcare IT

Just as it does in every other sector, technology also advances quickly in healthcare. Some emerging trends in healthcare IT include telemedicine, electronic health records (EHRs) and data analytics. 

Telemedicine took hold during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as doctors complied with lockdown protocols and sought to protect themselves and their staff from exposure to the virus. Once people saw how convenient telemedicine could be in some situations, they were more willing to invest in the technology needed to make it workable. 

Electronic health records (EHRs) have led to greater accessibility to patient records for both doctors and patients as well as better continuity of care between different situations, like the doctor’s office and the hospital, for example. EHRs need qualified personnel to install, monitor and maintain the systems as well as show staff how to use them when they are initially implemented or when updates occur. 

Data Analytics are used in medicine during the research process as well as when doctors notice patterns related to patient care and want to confirm their theories. Since much of the data is found in EHRs, there is some overlap between these two skill sets. While there may not be too many full time data analytics personnel outside the research arena, it is part of many jobs in the healthcare field. 

Challenges in Healthcare IT Recruitment

Tech recruiting for healthcare is challenging because it requires specialized skills. The stakes are high in maintaining systems–in fact, patients’ lives can depend on keeping things running smoothly and minimizing downtime. 

In addition, regulatory compliance can be daunting. The government needs to ensure that its rules are being followed, ideally to maintain a high standard of patient care and to provide oversight from experts who have knowledge of best practices in the industry. 

With the right strategies, however, healthcare organizations can overcome these challenges and recruit the IT healthcare staff they need.

Effective Recruitment Strategies

One strategy that’s very effective is utilizing targeted job boards that list IT healthcare jobs specifically. These job boards will be visited by job seekers with IT skills and often, experience in the healthcare field, and should yield a higher number of qualified candidates than listing on generic sites. GDH provides job seekers with its own dedicated jobs board that is extremely useful in searching for specific jobs by location, keyword, and type.

Industry networks are another useful tool to source candidates for your IT healthcare positions. Any time you can get a direct recommendation of qualified candidates, it’s worth at least taking a closer look.

When you promote your healthcare organization in a job listing or other resource, it’s important to showcase growth opportunities within the organization and to mention that you offer a positive work culture. These in-demand traits of healthcare companies will boost interest in your positions and make it easier to find IT healthcare talent. 

Retaining Top Healthcare IT Talent

Once you hire the staff you need, your attention should shift quickly to retention. It’s expensive to replace staff frequently, and the need to do so can indicate a problem in your company culture or hiring process. 

Because both the IT and healthcare fields change and evolve rapidly, continuous professional development is an important component of any retention program. Most high-performing employees recognize the need for continuing education and value it as part of their employment situation.

It’s a given that compensation should be as competitive as possible and should keep up with expected salary increases as time goes on. When employees feel underpaid, it is difficult for them to feel supported and valued in the workplace. Under these conditions, they are more vulnerable to poaching or may actively look for a different job.

Lack of satisfaction and engagement is a top reason why employees leave their jobs; and conversely, when an employee feels satisfied in their work and is engaged in the workplace, they are less likely to leave it. 

The Future of Healthcare IT Staffing

One way that healthcare IT roles are expected to evolve is with a greater use of technology including AI and automation of repetitive processes. More system designers will be needed to create agile systems that can be changed over time without going obsolete, and data analysts will be needed to use the vast amounts of data being collected from patients on a daily basis.

Finally, technology is expected to take an even greater role in the future of healthcare, which means more IT staff will be needed to keep all that technology running smoothly and teach others how to use it. Agility and innovation in recruitment practices will be needed more than ever to find the most qualified staff for the organization’s needs.

Professional staffing services are an important part of many organizations’ hiring strategies because they are more effective than in-house hiring teams and can supplement them for greater effectiveness. 

GDH provides healthcare IT staffing services, offering expertise and talent pipelines to quickly find and hire the staff you need.