Filling the Gaps: Survey Finds Nearly 60% of Hospitals and Health Systems Have More Than 100 Job Vacancies

South San Francisco, Calif. – May 18, 2022 –AKASA™, the leading developer of AI for healthcare operations, released findings from a new survey where more than 400 healthcare finance leaders identified vacancies across their healthcare organizations and the revenue cycle. The findings highlight how insufficient staffing is hampering daily operations and pushing a strained workforce to the limit.

More than 57 percent of health systems and hospitals have more than 100 open roles to fill across their operations.

Of note, there is a correlation between the size of respondents’ hospitals and/or health systems and the number of vacancies they reported.

Additionally, one in four healthcare finance leaders report needing to hire more than 20+ employees to fully staff their revenue cycle departments.

“If you don’t have the people, you can’t do the work,” said Amy Raymond, VP of revenue cycle operations at AKASA. “For hospitals, lack of staff within the revenue cycle means you aren’t getting paid. To attract talent, healthcare financial leaders should shift their mindsets: this means relaxing job requirements like years of experience or offer intensive training to new hires with limited background in healthcare finance. The second piece is retention: leaders should be investing and upskilling their staff to provide more rewarding work and ensure compensation levels are competitive.”

To help fill in the staffing gaps and elevate staff, hospitals and healthcare systems are increasingly looking to AI-powered automation solutions. Automation increases staff productivity, immediately adapts to fluctuating volumes, provides an opportunity for cost restructuring, enables business continuity and the ability to ramp up or down as needed, and improves the patient financial experience.

“We’ve had the same discussion in the revenue cycle for the past 25 years: how do we reduce churn, increase productivity, or drive down denials?” said Raymond. “Now, the discussion is and will continue to be around automation and being more process-oriented. How do we incorporate automation? What should change management around that look like? Where do we put our people and how do we manage them around automation?”

AKASA is helping leaders understand the changing dynamics impacting the revenue cycle, offering strategies and insights from our experts and solutions to transform healthcare operations in this challenging environment. To learn more, download our report, “No Resignation: Solving Today’s Greatest Staffing Challenges in the Healthcare Revenue Cycle.”

Commissioned by AKASA, the survey fielded responses from 411 chief financial officers and revenue cycle leaders at hospitals and health systems across the United States through the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s (HFMA) Pulse Survey program between December 1, 2021 and December 21, 2021. The national survey was designed to assess the adoption of automation in revenue cycle operations at hospitals and health systems across the U.S. 

About AKASA

AKASA is the leading developer of AI for healthcare operations. AKASA scales human intelligence with leading-edge AI and ML securely trained on customer data to learn unique systems, continuously adapt to changing environments, and deliver comprehensive automation and analytics for complex workflows. The result is a seamlessly integrated, customized solution that reduces operating costs, frees up staff to do the work they love, and helps health systems allocate resources to where they matter most. 

AKASA has a work-from-anywhere attitude and we are hiring. Step into the future of healthcare with AKASA. Learn more at www.AKASA.com/careers.