Overview of the Medical Supplies Industry

Without proper supplies, any venture will fail. This is especially true in the medical industry, where supplies are vital to good healthcare. While there is a shortage of doctors and nurses, there is no shortage of sick people in our aging population so the demand for supplies is ongoing and everlasting.

Globally,the  medical equipment and supplies industry has annual revenues of $273 billion and is expected to grow to $349 billion in 2016. Included is a vast array of products: catheters, monitoring systems, pumps, wound care, specialty bags, etc. Some key markets include surgical supplies at 45% of the market, with catheters ($32 billion) as a significant subset as well as patient monitoring systems ($9.3 billion) and wound care supplies.

The medical supply industry is expected to increase as the percentage of the elderly portion of the US grows by 146% from now to 2050. Technological innovation is also expected to impact the industry positively, as well as an increase in medical tourism and advertising of products directly to potential customers.

As medical supply companies grow, they need better cash flow to manage their resources. Factoring is a way to keep staff and bills paid so the company can focus on making excellent and innovative products to save lives.

For the full article, see Medical Equipment and Supply Industry: Market Research Reports, Statistics and Analysis

HCA’s Parallon Acquires Healthcare Staffing Firm

Parallon Business Solutions, subsidiary of healthcare service provider HCA, recently bought a Texas based healthcare staffing agency to supplement their workforce management offerings. Their new acquisition (Martin,Fletcher) will add physician staffing to the existing pool of 7,000 health professionals. Parallon will now be able to fill temporary and full time physicians to client hospitals and elsewhere, in addition to nurses and allied staff such as dieticians and physical therapists.

This acquisition comes as no surprise in light of recent trends towards staffing, especially in the healthcare industry. Health care as we know it is changing, due in part to the Affordable Care Act and also the coming nationwide shortages of health professionals. By buying Martin, Fletcher, Parallon is simply seeking to stay ahead of the curve by forecasting the need for temporary health care workers to fill shortages.

For the full article, see HCA’s Parallon Buys Texas Company

Temporary Hospice Staffing Factoring Case Study

The temporary hospice staffing factoring specialists at PRN Funding recently invited one of our current hospice staffing clients to “spill the beans” in a tell-all interview about her experiences with using PRN Funding as a medical staffing factor.

Although the video and printed interview is posted on PRN Funding’s web site, we also included them on The Factoring Blog for all of our medical staffing agency owners.

Chastity Williams has a big heart, and she had a big dream. As a long term care nurse she had many encounters with hospice nursing. In 2007, there was a tremendous nursing shortage and hospice was a very misunderstood area of health care. Chastity knew she could help make a difference in people’s lives and wanted to start her own hospice temporary staffing agency – Nursing by Demand.

“Like everyone else, I had an idea and thought I’d open a business. When I started I was all heart and had big ideas for the nursing part, but I didn’t know as much about the business part.” She felt uncertainty as many entrepreneurs do, and wondered how she’d be able to raise payroll.

“Chastity had a couple clients lined up before she started, but as in many new business situations, they didn’t pay quite fast enough. So she didn’t have the cash on hand to meet payroll. That’s a lot of pressure for a new business,” says Ryan Elliott, her Account Manager at PRN.

A business loan was out of the question – Chastity was adamant that she didn’t want to start a business with debt. She did some research and came across PRN Funding’s web site as well as some others, and looked into several.

Click here to continue reading why Chastity decided to choose PRN Funding as her hospice staffing factor.

Top 5 Nursing Careers

Everyone knows that nurses are going to be in high demand for the foreseeable future. Driving that point home even more, Brian Summers recently blogged about the Top Five Nursing Careers in the upcoming years. For the benefit of our nurse staffing readers, the nurse staffing account receivable specialists at PRN Funding wrote a condensed version of the post below:

One: Travel Nursing Careers
Travel nurses have the ability to control their career paths while working in a variety of healthcare settings. The pay is good too, ranging from $22-$40/hour.

Two: Military Nursing Careers
Basically, military nurses choose a career in the armed forces, which opens the door to some exciting travel and education benefits while adding a lot of support to the nation.

Three: Forensic Nursing Careers
The main objective of forensic organization is to ensure that criminals are brought to book for their wrongdoings, and forensic nurses help these organizations by documenting injuries and collecting DNA evidence. In addition, forensic nursing is considered one of the top-paying nursing jobs.

Four: Legal Nurse Consulting Careers
In order to become a legal nurse consultant, you need to have specialized training above and beyond your RN license. In addition, legal nurse consultants can easily bring in $100-$150/hour for their services, which include: providing medical and legal inputs to a legal team after analyzing the medical evidence of an event and/or testifying in court as an expert witness in cases that include medical malpractice and product liability.

Five: Surgical Nurse Careers
If you recall, we blogged about how some hospitals are seeing shortages in specialized nurse positions yesterday. So it’s no surprise that surgical nurse careers are anticipated to be in high demand in the next decade. Basically, surgical nurses assist doctors in prep work for surgeries as well as carrying out post-op recovering procedures and administrative duties.

More Hospitals Hiring Temps

An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal discussed how more and more general surgeons are shifting from private practices to temporary assignments as a result of the economic downturn, rising overhead costs and declines in reimbursements.

So much so that “general surgery is now among the fastest growing areas of a temporary medical staffing undystry that’s expected to double to $2.1 billion in 2009 from five years ago, according to Locumtenens.com.”

The WSJ article, Surgeon Shortage Pushes Hospitals to Hire Temps, goes on to say that “temporary surgeons used to be mostly older physicians who wanted a lighter workload, or those fresh out of training, still deciding where to put down roots. But today, more are midcareer people.”

The WSJ estimated that it can cost a hospital up to $1500/day, plus travel and lodging expenses for a temporary surgeon to come in and perform scheduled procedures and emergency operations. But as hospitals continue to face a shortage in nurses and doctors, utilizing locum tenens staffing is quickly becoming one of the only options available.

Atlanta Hospital Falls into Financial Crisis

Another more pressing article appeared in The New York Times (1/8/08) concerning Grady Memorial Hospital’s declining financial status. A multimillion dollar shortfall of the 675-bed hospital is due to providing charity and emergency care that no entity (not the sourrounding counties, nor the state or federal government) has been willing to cover.

 

The lengthy article cites Medicaid and underinsured and uninsured patients as the culprit for Grady’s cash flow problem. To date, Grady Memorial estimates it would take a whopping $366 million to meet the long-ignored capital needs, which include outdated and broken equipment and nurse staffing shortages.

 

Although we mentioned before that Grady Memorial Hospital was paying it’s vendors in about 30 days, it’s currently taking PRN Funding’s clients at least 60 days to be paid by the facility.

 

Click here to read the entire article, A Safety-Net Hospital Falls Into Financial Crisis. Please note, that you might have to create an account to view the article.

 

AMN Healthcare Offers Free White Papers

As an industry healthcare staffing industry leader, AMN Healthcare is now offering white papers on their web site designed to help other medical staffing companies address their healthcare staffing challenges more effectively and keep them abreast of key industry topics.

All you have to do is fill out a form and download the white paper for free.  Currently, there are three white papers available on their web site:

Travelers on the Magnet Journey: The Contribution of Travel Nurses in Preparing for and Maintaining ANCC Magnet™ Designation
The Magnet Recognition Program takes its name from the great success of healthcare organizations in attracting and retaining an exceptional nursing staff. Learn about the importance of the Magnet program and the role travel nurses can play in Magnet designation and promoting positive patient outcomes.

Maximize Return on Travel Nursing Investment
Hiring the right nurses to accommodate fluctuating demand is challenging; staff surpluses mean unnecessary costs, while shortages can cause lost revenue opportunities and affect patient care. Learn how the Economic Staffing Forecaster can help you determine the most cost-effective mix of temporary and full-time nurses.

How to Hire Travel Nurses
Whether you need to cover a vacation, staff new beds or simply fill a vacant position, looking for the right nurse to fit your needs quickly and effectively can be a daunting task. Screening, interviewing and all the employment details take time and energy, so partnering with a travel nursing company you trust can make this process easier and ensure you find the right nurse.

Five Trends to Watch in the Medical Staffing Industry

At this year’s Healthcare Staffing Summit, Barry Asin (EVP & Chief Analyst of Staffing Industry Analysts Inc.) shared five trends to watch in the healthcare staffing marketplace for the upcoming year.  We’ve decided to share his points with our readers:

  1. There’s a limited supply of practitioners, but there’s a modest increase in the number of nurses.  New grads, male nurses, foreign-born nurses and older workers who are interested in a career change.
  2. There’s ongoing growth and demand.  Since 1992, there has been a 50 percent increase in healthcare employment. 
  3. There’s a healthy competitive environment.  In 2006, 21 medical staffing agencies were over the $50 million mark, and 13 were over the $100 million mark, and the top ten firms owned 40 percent of the market.  There is a lot of growth in specialty industries such as radiology, pharmacy, CRNA and international recruiting, but nursing is still the largest.
  4. Regulations / government intervention is portrayed in a positive light because it helps with nurse-patient ratios, overtime restrictions, licensing, immigration reform and visa shortages.
  5. Technology trends are both good and bad.  About 12 percent of facilities have adopted a VMS and another 44 percent plan to adopt them in the future.  This is a slow train coming for the industry as a whole.  It’s only a matter of time before everyone’s using a VMS.  The internet has helped keep recruiting costs down with the rise in company web sites, job boards and the social networking.

In general Barry said that the public medical staffing company results were positive in the second quarter, and the trends are remaining very strong.  Net income and gross margins continue to grow.

Barry also mentioned that a good opportunity for medical staffing agencies is to look into non-healthcare-related positions within a hospital, which are usually filled by temporary workers. Examples of some of these positions include: janitors and cafeteria workers.

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