What is Workforce Management in Healthcare?

Did You Know?

A study by McKinsey found that organizations using advanced workforce management (WFM) tools report a 33% improvement in employee scheduling efficiency, highlighting the power of optimized staffing in enhancing operational performance.

In today’s fast-evolving healthcare landscape, effective workforce management (WFM) is more important than ever. As care models shift toward patient-centric, hybrid, and often supply-constrained approaches, traditional systems struggle to keep pace. Outdated tools and manual processes can lead to staffing inefficiencies, administrative burdens, and ultimately, compromised patient care and profit margins.

Untether Labs addresses these challenges by integrating seamlessly with existing systems, offering advanced forecasting, real-time reporting, task automation, and AI-driven scheduling. By empowering healthcare organizations to optimize staffing, reduce burnout, and improve both workforce satisfaction and patient outcomes, Untether Labs helps ensure that healthcare professionals can focus on what matters most: delivering quality patient care.

Understanding Workforce Management in Healthcare

Workforce management (WFM) is a strategic approach that ensures having the right employees in the right roles at the right times. While it involves scheduling and staffing, WFM goes beyond basic administrative tasks. It’s about aligning workforce availability with actual needs to boost efficiency, minimize costs, and enhance service delivery. In healthcare, this alignment becomes critical due to fluctuating patient demand—especially in areas like telehealth and hospital staffing, where service requirements can change rapidly.

For healthcare providers, effective WFM ensures that patient care remains uninterrupted, resources are allocated efficiently, and staff members are fully supported, all while maintaining operational viability in an increasingly complex market.

Healthcare’s Unique Workforce Management Challenges

As of 2024, healthcare organizations face a trifecta of WFM challenges:

1. Care Has Evolved: Supply-Constrained, Patient-Centric, and Hybrid

Modern patients expect more than just in-person visits—they want flexible options, including virtual consultations, and they want care delivered promptly. Yet, many healthcare systems are supply-constrained. Staffing shortages, along with regulatory and licensing complexities, make it difficult to align personnel with fluctuating patient needs. The hybrid model (combining in-person and virtual care) intensifies this complexity, making workforce alignment more challenging than ever.

According to McKinsey, few healthcare systems have the dynamic infrastructure required to seamlessly manage resources across diverse settings. The result? Underutilized staff during slow periods and overwhelmed providers when demand spikes.

2. Incumbent Systems Fall Short: Limited Scalability

Most electronic health record (EHR) platforms and legacy systems were not built for the kind of predictive workforce planning that modern healthcare requires. Without AI-driven forecasting and real-time data analytics, staffing remains reactive rather than proactive. This lack of scalability hampers growth and integration, as health organizations expanding into new service lines or regions struggle with inefficiencies like scheduling conflicts and misaligned resource allocation.

3. Negative Patient Outcomes and Margins Due to Administrative Burden

Administrative tasks often consume a significant portion of a clinician’s time. McKinsey reports that 37% of a doctor’s available time is spent on non-clinical work, such as documentation and compliance tracking. Not only does this strain staff and contribute to burnout, but it also affects patient care quality and bottom-line performance. Streamlining administrative processes could save the U.S. healthcare system up to $265 billion annually, yet without modern WFM solutions, realizing these savings remains elusive.

Why These Issues Matter

Inefficient workforce management doesn’t just affect back-office metrics—it directly impacts patient outcomes, financial stability, and staff morale. Longer wait times, lower-quality care, and clinician burnout all stem from suboptimal staffing strategies. In an environment where healthcare expenditures are rising faster than revenue growth, and where patient trust and outcomes are paramount, WFM inefficiencies threaten the sustainability of many healthcare organizations.

Optimizing Healthcare Operations: Leveraging Technology for Smarter Workforce Management

To overcome these challenges, healthcare organizations need a comprehensive, technology-driven approach. By integrating advanced forecasting, efficient scheduling, employee engagement, and continuous monitoring, providers can enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and elevate the quality of care.

1. Forecasting Workload: Predicting Demand to Optimize Staffing

Accurate forecasting is the foundation of effective WFM. By analyzing historical data, patient demand trends, and external factors, providers can anticipate staffing needs before bottlenecks occur. AI-powered solutions, like those offered by Untether Labs (check our platform’s capabilities), can integrate seamlessly with EHR systems and other tools to predict patient volumes, align workforce capacity, and automate administrative tasks. This proactive approach helps minimize resource underutilization and reduces the risk of overburdening staff.

Actionable Insights:

• Implement AI-driven forecasting tools to predict patient volumes and align staffing accordingly.
• Utilize integrated solutions that connect with existing EHRs, streamlining data and reducing manual tasks.

2. Scheduling Appointments Per Shift: Streamlining the Process

Automated scheduling systems can consider factors like provider availability, patient demand, and specialized skill sets. By using WFM technology, providers can efficiently manage both in-person and telehealth appointments. Untether Labs takes this further by automating follow-ups and reducing no-shows, ensuring that the right specialists are available at the right time.

Actionable Insights:

• Adopt automated scheduling tools that dynamically adjust shifts based on forecasts, availability, and specialties.
• Integrate telehealth and in-person scheduling in one platform to manage a hybrid care model effectively.

3. Involving Employees in the Scheduling Process: Increasing Engagement and Reducing Turnover

When healthcare workers have more control and visibility into their schedules, job satisfaction and retention improve. Untether Labs enables staff involvement through self-scheduling options, ensuring that clinicians can balance personal and professional demands. This reduces burnout and fosters a healthier, more engaged workforce—critical in an era marked by widespread clinician fatigue.

Actionable Insights:

• Offer self-scheduling and shift preference options to increase flexibility and staff satisfaction.
• Involve staff in decision-making to reduce burnout and improve retention rates.

4. Reporting and Monitoring: Continuous Improvement Through Data

Real-time dashboards and analytics help healthcare organizations track key performance indicators, from provider utilization to patient wait times. By continuously monitoring staffing levels and adjusting strategies as needed, providers can ensure that resources are always aligned with patient needs.

Untether Labs leverages AI-powered tools to schedule shifts that meet service-level agreements (SLAs) and close care gaps. This data-driven feedback loop drives ongoing improvements in both care delivery and financial performance.

Actionable Insights:

• Use integrated reporting tools to track KPIs like patient wait times and appointment adherence.
• Continuously refine scheduling and resource allocation strategies based on real-time insights.

Empowering Healthcare Workforce Management with Untether Labs

We built Untether Labs to solve real clinical operations challenges, leveraging best-in-class technology inspired by our experiences at companies like Uber and Amazon. By adopting advanced forecasting, streamlined scheduling, employee engagement, and continuous data-driven refinement, healthcare organizations can significantly enhance their WFM practices.

As the healthcare sector continues to evolve, investing in robust, AI-powered workforce management solutions is no longer optional—it’s essential. With the right tools, providers can improve patient care, reduce costs, and alleviate the administrative burdens that strain clinicians and erode margins.

Ready to modernize your workforce management strategies? Learn more about Untether Labs and discover how we can help your organization thrive.

References

• McKinsey & Company. (2023). The gathering storm: The uncertain future of US healthcare.
• McKinsey & Company. (2024). Administrative simplification: How to save a quarter trillion dollars in US healthcare.
• National Academy of Medicine. Clinician Burnout: The Impact of Work-Life Balance.

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Written credits: Ross Lomocso