Hospitals are businesses. It’s probably the thing most patients hate the most about them. There is always an aspect of personal removal inherent to any big business. Imagine, if you will, a small rural hospital recently acquired by a larger regional healthcare network. Where once a patient could phone their doctor directly, now they are redirected to a call centre hundreds of miles away. This is one of the side effects of business development in healthcare. Frustrations inevitably ensue for both patients and care providers alike. And yet, there are benefits to be had as well. Bigger hospitals have more resources and a great opportunity to deliver high-quality patient care.

In this article, we take a look at what business development means in the context of healthcare and how it can be used to create better patient outcomes.

What Does Business Development Mean?

It really depends on the situation. In the introduction, we floated the idea of a healthcare buyout or merger. These situations, often called “integrations,” are a very common form of healthcare development. Networks expand through acquisition. One hospital becomes two, and so on.

Integration has its pros and cons. Anytime two organizations merge, there is some friction. For one thing, both hospitals probably already have fully developed departments. This won’t pose much of a risk to doctors and nurses, but it could spell trouble for administrators.

Even a recently expanded hospital network does not need two full finance departments. Some people will get laid off. Others will churn out as they deal with the stress of learning new processes and procedures.

Call it growing pains. Eventually, however, the results should improve. Patients will have more care options. More specialists. More clinics. Better resources overall. Both hospitals, meanwhile, will have a greater wealth of data. Insights that can be applied to improve processes and boost patient outcomes.

Of course, not every business development process is the result of a merger. Hospitals can also expand by opening new clinics or locations. Developing their practices. Offering new opportunities for existing personnel.

No matter what the specific circumstances are, the operative word is ultimately “more.” More for patients. More for providers. In the next heading, we look at what that can mean for nurses.

Upskill Opportunities

The more resources a hospital has, the more it can invest in educating its staff and helping nurses expand their skills. Continuing education is, of course, a professional requirement for all healthcare workers. It is the hospital that pays for these continuing education situations.

Still, there are variations in the quality of that continuing education. The better the upskilling opportunity, the better the quality of care will ultimately be.

Nurses have several options for upskilling:

  • “Bootcamps”– Short-term educational seminars. These might involve weekend lectures or short-term online classes focused on developing a specific skill. These are pretty standard in the world of healthcare continuing education. Often, these courses are designed to fill in gaps. Best practices change and develop over time. What a nurse learned fifteen years ago will be in some ways different than what is being taught today. Boot camps ensure everyone is on the same page.
  • Certifications– Nurses also have the option to seek specialized certifications. These opportunities are typically leveraged by people who hope to pivot into new careers. For example, if you want to become a forensic nurse or a diabetes educator, you will need a specialized certification to do it. There are dozens of these specialized categories available to nurses.
  • Graduate School– Obviously, a considerably larger investment of both time and money. Nurses going out for graduate school might do so to attain a leadership position. They might also do it because they want to become nurse practitioners. These highly specialized careers give nurses the opportunity to increase their earnings and gain considerably more autonomy.

Obviously, it costs a lot of money to send a nurse to graduate school. Certification programs and upskilling seminars aren’t free either. Why should a hospital shell out for its nurses to go to school?

The Benefit

There are two primary reasons why a hospital would feel compelled to pay good money for upskilling opportunities:

  • It’s what nurses want: It is difficult to overstate the value of keeping nurses happy during a time when they are in such desperately short supply. Currently, half of all nurses churn out of the profession entirely within five years on the job. That’s a bad figure. Upskilling opportunities give them the opportunity to learn skills that may help them pivot into careers that hold their interest while keeping them within the healthcare system.
  • It’s what patients need: Healthcare shortages have also resulted in major issues for patients. Long wait times. A shortage of care provider options. More nurse practitioners or specialized RNs can do a lot to improve patient confidence and improve the community at large.

Do upskilling seminars and graduate school programs cost money? Of course, they do. However, it’s important to understand how nuanced the expense can be. High rates of turnover cost money as well. Investing in the future of nursing may be an expense that pays for itself in the long run.

Conclusion

Obviously, good incentive programs aren’t enough to fix the nursing retention program in their own right. What is needed is effective business development in healthcare.  Nurses need better scheduling protocols. Improved compensation. More developed support programs.

They also need more nurses. Healthcare shortages put a lot of strain and pressure on the people who do stick around. Often, nurses who have loved their jobs for years will wind up churning out after suffering for too long under the strain of an over-taxed and understaffed hospital.

Still, good upskilling opportunities can certainly serve as a step in the right direction. Hospitals need well-trained employees and strong nursing leaders. When candidate pools are short-supplied, the best way to find great healthcare workers is to nurture them from within.