Sterling Helps Non-Profit Health System Overcome Talent Shortages

When our client began working with us, it was taking on average over four weeks (22 business days) for a candidate to move from “offer accepted” to starting work. We have been able to reduce the average time to start to under two weeks, with an average turnaround time for each candidate’s background check and drug & health screening services to 3.3 days. Even during the peak of Covid disruption, turnaround time remained under five days.

If we are able to make a candidate productive up to 12 business days faster, assuming 8-hour shifts, that is 96 extra hours per candidate. Multiply that by the 9,000 candidates that our client screens in a year, and the result is 864,000 extra working hours. Of course, our client might not be able to start a candidate the day they are cleared to work, so it is impossible to be precise with the hours saved. Given dire healthcare talent shortages, however, “finding” even a fraction of these hours is consequential and may mean the difference between life and death for patients.

How exactly did we reduce the turnaround time so dramatically? Our pre-employment health screening services come with state of the art technology and a unique concierge service model that focuses equally on providing a fantastic candidate experience and proactively chasing results from labs and clinics. Our concierge service includes a dedicated, point of contact for our client and their candidates, consolidating what can otherwise be an unwieldy, confusing, and disjointed process. Our concierge keeps an eye on every detail and task. As soon as our client places an order, the concierge moves briskly to get the candidate registered for the required services at the most convenient locations. Sterling has a network of over 15,000 collection sites and clinics sites nationwide—one of the most expansive and convenient networks—so the concierge has flexibility and options.

Equally important, though, the concierge’s work doesn’t stop when the candidate’s services are complete. The concierge then pivots to aggressively chasing results. The end result of all of these activities is that testing and reporting happen much more swiftly and efficiently.

Our client was nervous that specific requirements for a candidate were occasionally falling through the cracks in their old process. For example, they would discover belatedly that a candidate had not provided proof of a negative tuberculosis result before starting work. Tracking these requirements was complex, because our client operates in multiple states, and each state and role has its own requirements.

Sterling was able to create clinical and non-clinical packages for each state and role and configured them in the client’s ATS (Workday) to make things much easier while also reducing potential for human error.

By automating and streamlining many aspects of the process, we have been able to encourage stronger compliance focus, but also reduce the administrative burden shouldered by busy teams. This allows them to spend their time more valuably. Another benefit has been cost reduction—no longer does the organization end up ordering unnecessary services for candidates. For example, the candidate who requires the Wisconsin Caregiver Search gets the Wisconsin Caregiver Search, but no one else.

Our tools and processes, designed with compliance in mind, help provide peace of mind to clients like this one. However, our in-house experts have been able to advise on the challenging questions that have arisen since program launch. Our Healthcare Division’s cross-functional team—including Implementation Project Managers, Client Success Partners, and Regulatory Consultants—work exclusively with Healthcare clients and bring their own knowledge to bear at each step along the way.