President of the National Nurses in Business Association (NNBA), Pat Bemis, wrote an article in December’s edition of RN entitled, Obstacles to Nurse Entrepreneurship. In her article, Bemis discussed three mindsets that nurses have when making the transition from employment to entrepreneurship:

1. The instant response mindset - Bemis says that nurses are used to getting an immediate response to their work, however, it’s important to break out of that “instant gratification” mindset because it takes time.

2. The “I can do it myself” mindset - Out of fear of criticism, nurses tend to have the mindset that to “gather all the information and put it into a certain arrangement…before involving another team member.” Bemi suggests for nurses to involve business support team members early on in the start-up process.

3. The desire for perfection mindset - Bemis also advised for nurse entrepreneurs to deviate away from the need to do everything perfectly because “this mindset leads nurses to overlook opportunities that arise while seeking that elusive perfection.”

Click here for more information about Pat Bemis and the NNBA.

Prompted by the dwindling economy, the two nurses who started the Any Nurse Can consulting business, started Pitch to Nurses about a month ago. Pitch to Nurses is a foundation is for disable, financially distressed and retired nurses who need a helping hand to those in need when the government and the financial institutions are willing to. Pitch to Nurses is designed to provide financial help and security to all the Nursing community.

Click here if you want to donate to the Pitch to Nurses program.

Scott Love of RecruitingMastery.com, wrote an excellent article in Net-Temps Recruiters e-newsletter that gave recruiters tips on how to get quick-paying clients.  More specifically, he advised recruiters to use “fear of loss” as a motivator.  Translated to healthcare vendors like medical staffing agencies and medical transcription services, threatening to pull your nurses or ceasing your transcription services until until a check is received is a good attention-grabber and lets the medical facility know that you mean business.

Love also highly recommends putting your terms directly on your invoices, which is something Phil Cohen (president of PRN Funding, LLC) suggested to temporary nurse staffing business owners in part two of his article series: How Nurse Staffing Agencies Can Get Paid Quicker.

Not to mention, another way for business owners to get paid quicker during a bad economy is to utilize invoice funding.  Selling your invoices to a factoring company is a great way for you turn your receivables into cash immediately.

Reliant Health Care Professionals, a medical staffing agency who specializes in staffing nurses on short notice, announced that it’s searching for a new CEO earlier this week.  The current president and CEO, Gregory Mikkelsen, will step down and serve as the executive VP and vice chair of the Denver-based healthcare staffing firm.

“There are some other things I would like to do professionally and personally,” Mikkelsen said.  He began speaking to the Reliant Health Care Professionals’ board about his succession plan last year.

Click here to read the entire briefing via Staffing Industry Analysts: Reliant starts search for CEO.

As an account receivables factoring firm who specializes in funding medical staffing companies, factoring invoices for medical transcription services and providing financing to medical coding companies, we (PRN Funding, LLC) made a big announcement today.

In order to serve our clients to the best of our ability, PRN Funding is now accepting VISA, MasterCard, and American Express credit cards as a form of payment on its clients’ invoices.  Traditionally, PRN Funding has only accepted checks and direct deposits.

Click here to read the entire press release on PRN Funding’s web site: PRN Funding Now Accepting Credit Cards.

It’s been almost a year since we first blogged about Ensemble Chimes Global vendor management system filing for bankruptcy, and bankruptcy trustee, Howard Ehrenberg announced last week that “they are pretty close to making claims against certain third parties.”

In a Staffing Industry Analyst’s post, Ehrenberg also mentioned that the IRS made $80 million in claims against the debtors in the Chimes bankruptcy case, including $50 million as a priority claim ahead of unsecured creditors (i.e. temporary staffing agencies).

In regards to temporary staffing firms who utilized Chimes’ vendor management system, Ehrenberg said that a few customers are continuing to dispute a court order to pay management fees.  “If those customers don’t pay, the court has allowed the fees to be collected from staffing firms involved.”

Click here to read the entire post: Claims may soon be filed in Chimes case.

The Haley Marketing Group dispersed a press release this afternoon announcing the launch of their new web site.  As a marketing and web design firm dedicated to the staffing and recruiting industries, The Haley Group’s new web site offers staffing and recruiting professionals the following:

• 50-plus educational articles on marketing, sales and recruiting
• Past issues of the “The Idea Club” e-newsletter
• Access to the “Ask Haley” Blog with insights on the latest marketing trends and staffing industry news
• Over 130 project samples, including web sites, direct mail pieces, email campaigns, newsletters, logos and brochures

Apparently, PRN Funding is not the only organization who has upgraded to a newer version of its web site.  Click here to see PRN Funding’s new web site.

A federal jury convicted the nurse staffing owner of Kirpal Nurses dba Kind Hearts for not paying $500,000 in federal employment taxes last week.  The nurse staffing agency owner, Francis LeRoy McLain of Livingston, MT, supplies temporary nurses to nursing homes and other healthcare facilities.  (Some other companies McLain has operated since 1987 include: Lifelines Care Inc., Lifelines Cooperative Care Inc. and Cooperative Nurses Inc.).

McLain sued the U.S. in 1995, claiming his nurses were independent contractors rather than employees, and then the U.S. countersued, and the suits were settled in 1998 with McLain agreeing to withhold pay over employment taxes for nurses who worked for his businesses.  However, nonpayment of employment taxes still continued, as reported by the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Minnesota district.

The Physicians’ Foundation recently conducted a survey of 150,000 doctors nationwide, and 49 percent of the 12,000 respondents reported that they were considering leaving medicine because of “too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.”

Last week’s American Medical Association annual meeting predicted a shortage of 35,000-40,000 of primary care physicians by 2025.  According to a survey published in the September issue of the Journal of the Medical Association, only 2 percent of med school students plan to practice family medicine.

PRN Funding has written before about using temporary nurses to help fill the gaps when it comes to the nurse shortage.  Perhaps this physician shortage is an opportunity for locum tenens to seize.  What do you think?

This post referenced an article on CNN.com.  Click here if you want to read the entire article: Half of primary-care doctors in survey would leave medicine.

According to an article in yesterday’s Staffing Industry Analysts Daily News, a new survey conducted by AMN Healthcare Services Inc. said the new Medicare changes will make hospital revenue more dependent on nurses than in the past.

The write-up states: “Sixty-two percent of chief nursing officers said an ongoing Medicare effort to tie hospital reimbursement to patient satisfaction would enhance the status of nurses. In addition, new rules where Medicare will not pay hospitals for care provided as a result of diseases acquired at hospitals, known as “never events,” will also enhance the status of nurses, according to more than 54% of chief nursing officers.”

Click here to read the post: Medicare changes could boost nurses’ status.