Many organizations today are leveraging healthcare managed services (MSPs) to improve and optimize their workforce efficiency. But choosing the right partner can be difficult. How can leaders be sure that a company will take the necessary steps to meet their unique needs? With this MSP onboarding checklist, you’ll have some specific questions to ask to make sure any potential partner is up to the task.
Healthcare Workforce MSP Onboarding Checklist
There are many good reasons why healthcare organizations turn to MSP providers to help supplement their clinical workforce. By outsourcing the administrative burden of sourcing and hiring workers, administering invoices and payroll, and more, leaders can free up valuable time for their teams to do what they do best — provide premium, patient-centered care.
And because that job is so important, it’s essential that it be placed in good hands. During the selection process, leaders should make sure they clearly understand whether a potential MSP partner truly understands their specific operational needs, and whether they’re prepared to do what’s necessary to achieve success. But how can leaders really get meaningful insights into this important question?
Managed service providers have their own processes for onboarding clients. And as a leading healthcare MSP, we at CareerStaff understand this process better than most others. With our MSP onboarding checklist, leaders better understand what expectations to bring to the table, and what questions to ask a potential partner to ensure the best possible outcomes.
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1. Technological expertise and diversity
The first item on our MSP onboarding checklist is making sure that a potential partner can understand your existing systems, and adapt any potential solutions to it. They should demonstrate the willingness and ability to bring your current tech up to date with industry standards regarding cybersecurity and user experience (UX), both of which are essential components to long-term success.
It’s important to make sure that a prospective MSP partner can offer a comprehensive action plan to ensure a smooth technological synthesis. They should offer an approach that’s technology-neutral, to accommodate your specific needs. And they should come to the table with specific plans for:
- Updating applications and network environment to meet current industry standards
- Conducting an inventory of current equipment from mobile devices to network infrastructure, reviewing applicable warranties and creating a plan for access configuration
- Reviewing business applications and associated software license terms and contracts
- Reviewing all other existing relationships with current tech vendors, including Internet service providers, leasing and service contracts
- Securely importing necessary data, including regulatory compliance for the handling and storage of private health information (PHI)
- Improving best processes by applying innovations in automation and AI
2. A commitment to upholding your standards with a fully customized solution
A healthcare MSP partner should also be fully prepared to customize its approach, working with you to determine what aspects of workforce management best align with your larger strategic needs and initiatives. Instead of being presented with a single option — or just a few — you should be offered a spectrum of solutions to best utilize your resources while expanding your capabilities.
That means finding an MSP that will work to understand your strategic goals and key deliverables, in order to take the best possible action to fulfill them. They should also bring to the table a clearly defined plan for resolving potential issues at any point from planning to implementation and administration, as well as detecting new opportunities for improvement based on day-to-day results.
3. Dedicated communication and account management
It’s rare to find an MSP that doesn’t offer clients their own dedicated communication channel complete with technical support and an account manager. Often, a team of these professionals will be on hand. But will they be up to the task of ensuring smooth sailing, even when the weather gets windy?
To best answer this question, it’s important to clearly define the details of who you can contact, and when, and to what extent they’ll be able to help you. And this is necessary across every step of the relationship, from active guidance and execution during setup to ongoing support post-implementation.
In short, make sure that any potential MSP partner expresses a commitment to continuously meeting your specific needs at every stage of the journey, and introduces every member of the team who’ll be working toward your success. Anything short of this should be a red flag.
4. Attention to detail
Are the people representing the MSP as detail-focused as they need to be to ensure that they’ll fulfill your needs to the best of their ability? Or are they simply looking for another client to expand their revenue, and are perhaps not prepared to give you their full attention?
This can be tested by requesting operational assessments in the discovery phase. Pay attention to the level of detail in the responses, and whether they align with your organizational values. It’s also important to note whether questions are answered in a way that seems actionable to you, or whether they’re answered in a way that simply promotes the MSP’s own expertise in a non-specific way.
5. Actionable Industry Expertise
Constantly changing regulatory requirements and fee schedule reimbursement rates can be difficult for even large organizations with extensive resources. For smaller facilities and practices, it’s even more of a challenge. That’s why it’s important to ensure that your healthcare managed services provider not only understands the workings of the industry, but can offer actual expertise, too.
In particular, they should demonstrate an ability to fulfill applicable compliance requirements, including HIPAA, HITRUST and the NIST Healthcare Information Technology framework. They should also be able to proactively alert you to changes in the regulatory landscape and help make sure you’re compliant, and help to ensure that your cybersecurity measures are up to date.
> Pro Tip: Choose a Healthcare MSP with Joint Commission Gold Seal Certification
6. Clarity on finances and expectations
A key part of any MSP onboarding checklist is making sure that financial terms are clearly defined today, and in the event of any contingencies in the days, months and years to come. Are they letting you know the precise details of pricing and invoicing in a way that’s understandable and forthcoming? Or does this information seem vague, or difficult to get a clear answer on — or does it seem too good to be true?
Especially if your organization — or any facility therein — suddenly needs to scale up or down, misunderstandings around the cost of unanticipated events can have a big impact down the road. Make sure that you have clear figures on every aspect of pricing, and have them reviewed by personnel with legal and financial expertise. Outside counsel should be utilized if necessary.
7. A nationwide labor pool to ensure optimum staffing
Organizations that use healthcare managed service providers for workforce optimization gain more than just efficiency and cost savings. Partnering with a leading MSP like CareerStaff also grants access to a nationwide network of clinical workers. From RNs, CNAs and LPNs to respiratory therapists, PTs, OTs, technologists, pharmacists and more, we’ve got thousands of skilled clinical professionals on our roster.
With offices and locations across the United States, we can assure our MSP partners that they always have access to the staff they need — for daily operations, or in a moment of crisis. We’ve also got travel nurses and therapists, per diem nurses and other contingency workers to help ensure that our clients have everything they need to care for the patients and residents under their watch.
If you’re looking for a partner who can cover this MSP onboarding checklist with flying colors, you’ve come to the right place! Contact us today to learn more about our clinical workforce solutions, or request a free consultation now.