Majority of Patients Review Healthcare Experiences Online

51% of Americans surveyed said they share their personal healthcare experiences online via social media and review sites, such as Yelp, Google, and Facebook.

More and more, patients are consulting online reviews via sites such as Yelp and Google when determining which healthcare facility and provider to use, and are sharing their healthcare experiences online, as well, according to a new survey from Binary Fountain.

The results of the second annual Healthcare Consumer Insight & Digital Engagement Survey, released this week, indicate that:

  • 95% of the surveyed respondents find online ratings and reviews “somewhat” to “very” reliable.
  • Of the 95%, 100% of respondents between the ages of 18-24 and 97% of respondents between the ages of 25-34 find online ratings and reviews “somewhat” to “very” reliable.
  • 70% of Americans say online ratings and review sites have influenced their decision in selecting a physician.
  • 51% of Americans said they share their personal healthcare experiences online via social media and review sites, which is a 65% increase from the previous year.
  • Millennials are most likely to share their physician or hospital experiences online, with 70% saying they have done so.
  • 68% of Americans aged 18-24 said they have shared their healthcare experiences online, which is a staggering 94% increase over last year.
  • Facebook is the most used method of sharing healthcare experiences for ages 25-54.
  • Patients between the ages of 18-24 indicated that Google is their preferred online platform to share their healthcare experiences.

Have you Googled your facility lately?

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

5 Questions to Ask at Your Job Interview

When you are interviewing for a position, traditionally, you will be the one answering the questions, not asking them—but you should definitely ask some.

When you are interviewing for a position, traditionally, you will be the one answering the questions, not asking them. However, your interview should be just as much about whether the company a good fit for you, as it is about whether or not you are a good fit for the company.

At the end of the interview, you will likely be asked, “Are there any questions you have for me?” or some variation of that. Saying that you have no questions could make you look too passive and uninterested, and asking the wrong questions, such as only inquiring about compensation or benefits, could indicate to the interviewer that you are interested in the position for the “wrong” reasons. Instead, ask the following to ensure the job you’re interviewing for is the one, while positioning you to come across as a truly interested candidate looking to add value to the organization.

  • What can you tell me about the company’s culture?
  • What would your current employees say are the best and worst things about working here?
  • What challenges could I expect to encounter in this role?
  • How would you expect someone as myself to do better in this role than its previous occupant?
  • How do you see this company advancing or evolving over the next three to five years?

These questions allow you to get a feel for not only how the company aligns with your day to day life, by asking about culture, challenges, and expectations, but also how it fits into your larger career goals, by inquiring about the future of the company—and you’ll seem interested in more than just the salary.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Healthcare Jobs Grow for the 95th Month in a Row

When it comes to jobs, the healthcare sector remains strong, accounting for 16.5% of the total jobs added in the U.S. in August.

The latest jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been released, and the good news continues for the 95th straight month for the healthcare sector. Healthcare jobs have grown, yet again, adding 33,200 jobs in August, accounting for 16.5% of the total jobs added in the U.S. in August. A robust number all its own, the growth seen in August is downright staggering when compared to July’s 16,700 new jobs, of which it is nearly double.

Ambulatory healthcare services accounted for the most employment growth within healthcare last month, adding 21,100 jobs. Other notable gains included hospitals, which added 8,200 jobs in August, as well as nursing and residential care facilities, which accounted for an additional 3,900 jobs.

In total, healthcare employment has increased by 301,000 jobs over the year, according to the BLS.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Tech Startups Zero in On Healthcare

Y Combinator’s Demo Day saw the launch of giants such as Dropbox and Airbnb, and now a quarter of this year’s featured tech startups fall into the bio space, including healthcare.

Venture capitalists who attended Y Combinator’s Demo Day, the twice-annual event that showcases emerging technology startups, are increasingly turning their attention to the healthcare space, according to coverage of the event by Wired.

Demo Day, which took place from August 20th to the 22nd at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, showcases graduates and of Y Combinator’s prominent training program to investors, looking to get in on the ground floor of the next Dropbox or Airbnb, both of which began at Y Combinator.

A quarter of the 142 companies presenting at Demo Day fell into the Bio category, which includes healthcare and biotech—the largest percentage since Demo Day began.

To read Wired’s article, including their highlights of noteworthy bio startups that presented at Demo Day this year, click here.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Where the Healthcare Jobs Are

What states are your best bet for finding a job in healthcare? We break down the places with the most openings, as well as popular positions in each.

Healthcare is, has been, and continues to be a booming industry in the United States. But what states, in particular, have the most available jobs? We analyzed job data on our site and came up with the three states with the most available openings in healthcare right now, as well as a selection of the popular position types available in each.

1. California

2. Texas

3. New York

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Energy-Hog Hospitals: When They Start Thinking Green, They See Green

The health care sector is responsible for nearly 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a good enough reason to go green, but it can also reduce costs.

Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News

Hospitals are energy hogs.

With their 24/7 lighting, heating and water needs, they use up to five times more energy than a fancy hotel.

Executives at some systems view their facilities like hotel managers, adding amenities, upscale new lobbies and larger parking garages in an effort to attract patients and increase revenue. But some hospitals are revamping with a different goal in mind: becoming more energy-efficient, which can also boost the bottom line.

“We’re saving $1 [million] to $3 million a year in hard cash,” said Jeff Thompson, the former CEO of Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, Wis., the first hospital system in the U.S. to produce more energy than it consumed back in 2014. As an added benefit, he said, “we’re polluting a lot less.”

The health care sector — one of the nation’s largest industries — is responsible for nearly 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions — hundreds of millions of tons worth of carbon each year. Hospitals make up more than one-third of those emissions, according to a paper by researchers at Northeastern University and Yale.

Increasingly, though, health systems are paying attention:

  • Gundersen Health System in Wisconsin employs wind, wood chips, landfill-produced methane gas — and even cow manure — to generate power, reporting more than a 95 percent drop in its emissions of carbon monoxide, particulate matter and mercury from 2008 to 2016.
  • Boston Medical Center analyzed its hospital for duplicative and underused space, then downsized while increasing patient capacity. Among other changes, it now has a gas-fired 2-megawatt cogeneration plant that traps and reuses heat, saving money and emissions, while supplying 41 percent of the hospital’s needs and acting as a backup for essential services if the municipal power grid goes out.
  • Theda Clark Medical Center in Wisconsin is saving nearly $800,000 a year — 30 percent of its energy costs — after making changes that included retrofitting lights, insulating pipes, taking the lights out of vending machines and turning off air exchangers in parts of its building after hours.
  • Kaiser Permanente aims to be “carbon-neutral” by 2020, mainly by incorporating solar energy at up to 100 of its hospitals and other facilities. One already in use — at its Richmond (Calif.) Medical Center — is credited with reducing electric bills by about $140,000 a year.

While the environmental benefits are important, “what I’ve seen over the years is cost reductions are the prime motivator,” said Patrick Kallerman, research manager at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, which released a report this spring outlining ways the hospital industry can help states such as California reach environmental goals by becoming more efficient.

Some of its recommendations are simple: replacing old lighting and windows. Others are more complex: powering down heating and cooling in areas not being used and updating ventilation standards first set back in Florence Nightingale’s day. Such tight standards “might not be necessary,” Kallerman said. Loosening them could help save money and energy.

When Bob Biggio was hired in 2011 to oversee Boston Medical Center’s facilities, hospital leaders were about to launch a broad redesign. Yet the hospital was also facing serious financial struggles. He put the move on hold while analyzing how the hospital was using its existing space, looking for unused or duplicative areas.

“My first impression with data I had gathered was our campus was about 400,000 square feet bigger than it needed to be, said Biggio. “A square foot you never have to build is most efficient of all.”

The new design is smaller but more efficient, handling 20 percent higher patient volume and eliminating the need for ambulance transportation between far-flung areas of the campus. It also cut power consumption by 42 percent from a 2011 baseline.

While the hospital sunk a lot of money into the renovation, the center was able to sell off some of its land to help offset the costs, leading to about a five-year return on investment, Biggio said.

“We are a safety-net hospital with a large Medicaid population,” he said. “So this is the last place people expect to see the type of investments and progress we’ve made.”

But how to sell that in the C-suite?

The environmental argument wasn’t how Thompson convinced executives at Gundersen.

“At no point did I mention climate change or polar bears,” said Thompson.

Instead, he focused on the organization’s mission to improve health — and the potential cost savings.

“There are multiple examples — at Gundersen and other places — where, if we’re thoughtful, we can improve the local economy, lower the cost of health care and decrease the pollution that is making people sick,” he said.

But hospitals’ energy efficiency efforts vary, with only about 10 percent attempting changes as dramatic as those done at Gundersen, estimated Alex Thorpe, a hospital energy expert at Optum Advisory Services, a consulting firm owned by UnitedHealth Group.

“About 50 percent are in the middle,” he added, perhaps because these investments are weighed against other capital needs.

“If you have a well-known doctor that wants a new cutting-edge piece of equipment, then it can be hard to make the business case [for investing in alternative energy],” said Thorpe.

Of the more than 5,000 hospitals in the country, about 1,100 are members of Practice Greenhealth, a nonprofit that promotes environmental stewardship. Fewer than 300 hospitals qualify as Energy Star facilities, an Environmental Protection Agency program that recognizes buildings that rank in the top quartile for energy conservation among their peers.

Greenhealth estimates its members average about a million dollars a year in savings, but it all depends what steps they take.

There are modest savings from such things as reducing the heating and air conditioning in operating rooms during hours they are not in use, with median annual cost savings of $45,398, a report from the group notes. Other energy reduction efforts net another median $53,599 in annual savings, while swapping older lighting for new LED bulbs in operating rooms saves another $3,329.

Individually, those savings are not even rounding errors in most hospitals’ total expenses, which are measured in the millions of dollars.

Still, within facility expenses, energy use accounts for 51 percent of spending, so even modest cuts are “significant,” said Kara Brooks, sustainability program manager for the American Society for Healthcare Engineering.

Ultimately, that may affect what hospitals charge insurers and patients.

“If hospitals can lower peak demand through energy efficiency efforts, that will directly impact their pricing,” said Thorpe.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.


Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

The Best Hospitals, As Ranked by Specialty

If you work in a hospital setting, do you work at one of the best? The annual list of the Best Hospitals in the United States is out, and here are the winners.

Of the more than 5,500 hospitals in the United States, only 158 can call themselves “the best,” at least according to the just-released list of the Best Hospitals in the United States for 2018-2019 from U.S. News & World Report. To determine the winners, U.S. News collected and analyzed data from nearly 5,000 medical centers, as well as survey responses from 30,000+ physicians, and ranked those with the best scores across 16 specialties. Below are the top three hospitals named the Best for Cancer, Cardiology & Heart Surgery, Neurology & Neurosurgery, and Geriatrics, as well as their scores in their respective specialties.

Best Hospitals for Cancer

  1. University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX – 100/100
  2. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY – 97.4/100
  3. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN – 95.3/100

Best Hospitals for Cardiology & Heart Surgery

  1. Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH – 100/100
  2. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN – 99.6/100
  3. Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles, CA – 84.3/100

Best Hospitals for Neurology & Neurosurgery

  1. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN – 100/100
  2. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD – 95.7/100
  3. UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco, CA – 89.1/100

Best Hospitals for Geriatrics

  1. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN – 100/100
  2. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD – 97.5/100
  3. Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, NY – 94.5/100

The top three Best Hospitals in the United States, across all specialties and over all, according to the report, are Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Johns Hopkins Hospital, in that order.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Women (and Discrimination) in Healthcare

Despite women accounting for nearly 80% of all healthcare employees, they still face discrimination and barriers to advancement in the workplace, says a new report.

Healthcare is powered by women. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women account for 78.5% of the entire healthcare workforce. Still, the healthcare industry and the women employed by it, are not exempt from discrimination.

Rock Health, the first venture fund dedicated to digital health, recently released the results of their annual Women in Healthcare survey, in which they spoke to 635 women in healthcare about just that—being women in healthcare. The findings of the report indicate that women are pessimistic about achieving gender parity in their industry, that women led companies are better for morale, that African American women strongly believe racial discrimination is a barrier to career advancement, and more.

Here are some highlights from the report:

  • 55% of respondents believe it will take 25+ years to achieve gender parity in the workplace, with approximately 15% saying they believe it will take more than 50 years.
  • This lack of confidence may be tied to the fact that growth for women in positions of leadership has remained sluggish, or even declined, with women only accounting for 22.6% of board members and 21.9% of executives at Fortune 500 healthcare companies, up only 1.6% and 1.9%, respectively, since 2015, and women’s executive roles in hospitals seeing a decrease, down from 36.4% in 2015 to 34.5% in 2018.
  • Women in leadership roles, however, prove better for company morale. For survey respondents employed by companies with less than 10% women executives, the average rating of company culture was 5.5 out of 10, as opposed to companies with 50% or more women executives, which had an average rating of 8.6 out of 10.
  • Gender barriers weren’t the only things measured by the survey. Atop gender bias, 86% of African American women surveyed said their race is “very much” a barrier to career advancement, compared to just 9% of white women.
  • Among women of all races surveyed, 71.2% of women stated that they believe underselling skills is a significant barrier to career advancement.

The full survey results, including more facts and figures from the findings, can be viewed here.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

A Look at Healthcare Benefits for Hospital Employees

New findings show that hospitals are offering their employees fewer insurance options, and spending more per employee on healthcare benefits.

An annual survey from Aon, which collected data from nearly 250 hospitals and health systems in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, found that the average annual healthcare expense per employee has increased more than $2,000 in the last five years, climbing from $13,222 in 2013 to $15,519 in 2018.

The findings also indicate that hospitals are offering fewer insurance options to their employees, with 60% of the surveyed hospitals and health systems saying they only offer one or two insurance plans.

The survey also found that 49% offer employees a comprehensive and coordinated wellness program, and 54% offer a single paid time off pool arrangement, instead of offering separate sets of time off, such as vacation days and sick days.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

The State of Healthcare Across the United States

Vermont is the best state for Americans to receive healthcare and Louisiana is the worst, according to a new survey. Do you work in a state in the top five? Or, worse, the bottom five?

Vermont is the best state for Americans to receive healthcare and Louisiana is the worst, according to a new survey from WalletHub. The findings, which were compiled using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Council for Community and Economic Research, and many other reputable sources, were determined by comparing the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 40 measures of cost, accessibility, and outcome, including variables such as hospital beds per capita, infant, child, and maternal mortality rates, physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants per capita, cancer rates, share of non-immunized children, and more. States were graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the best possible healthcare available at the most reasonable cost. Below are the top five best and worst states and their scores, as found by the survey.

Top Five Best States for Healthcare

  1. Vermont (66.31/100)
  2. Massachusetts (65.31/100)
  3. New Hampshire (64.03/100)
  4. Minnesota (63.35/100)
  5. Hawaii (63.08/100)

Top Five Worst States for Healthcare

  1. Louisiana (41.14/100)
  2. Mississippi (41.53/100)
  3. Alaska (41.78/100)
  4. Arkansas (43.22/100)
  5. North Carolina (43.98/100)

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.