Proactive Healthcare Staffing Strategies Improve Care & Cut Costs

Too many healthcare staffing strategies involve waiting until there is a staffing shortage before stepping into action. But by that point, it’s too late to keep your floors staffed and running efficiently. 

Despite recent data showing that healthcare worker shortages dropped in 2025, turnover among healthcare workers remains high. This is especially the case in long-term care facilities, as CNAs and patient care techs turnover roughly one-third of their personnel every year. With ratios always at risk of dropping below acceptable levels, the more proactive you can be at addressing them, the better. 

That’s why it’s advantageous to pursue proactive healthcare staffing strategies—including reaching out to reputable recruiting agencies—before turnover hits hard and ratios drop too low. Here are some steps you can take right now. 

​How Chronic Understaffing Hurts Your Health System

Healthcare workers <link to healthcare staffing page> often spend significant portions of the year carrying larger patient loads than they can handle, which causes deeper problems that impact patient care.

Patient safety and readmissions

When units fail to maintain staffing quotas, clinicians and nurses are forced to triage tasks. Non-urgent (but important!) safety checks will often drop first, things like fall risk assessments, medication reconciliation, and beyond. As a result, the number of adverse events rises significantly, which can both lengthen stays and, in some cases, drive up readmission rates.  

Burnout and impact on clinicians and nurses

Never underestimate the impact that feeling overwhelmed and unable to provide adequate standards of care can have on clinicians and nurses. Even with overtime and double (or triple) shifts, chronic understaffing can lead to burnout, cynicism, and disengagement. This, in turn, erodes both patient experiences and overall team morale. Healthcare staff ends up quitting, thus fueling a downward trend in adequate staffing. 

Financial strain on health systems

The longer your facility remains understaffed, the more costs you’ll incur. When a staffing emergency hits, you often have to pay premium overtime rates just to keep people working (vs. planning a supplemental staffing strategy to avoid those costs). And when an overworked staff starts causing more errors and injuries, you expose your facility to clinical and legal risks, each of which carries their own costs. 

The Benefits of a Staffing Agency in Improving Patient Care

A staffing agency can be a critical partner when predictable surges happen (e.g., flu season, RSV spikes, and more). Health systems who work with agencies in advance of these spikes can start building teams who are ready to go when you need them. 

When you engage a healthcare staffing agency before ratios drop below compliance levels, you can see some of the following outcomes: 

• Lower mortality rates, as there’s enough staff to monitor patients more closely and intervene earlier
• Reduction in medication errors, falls, and hospital-acquired conditions, as safety practices are less likely to be skipped
• More efficient discharge planning and execution, which can decrease length of stay
• Better patient experiences: improved communication, responsiveness, and trust

The Financial Upside of Proactive Agency Engagement

Working proactively with an agency before a surge hits also has a financial upside. Rather than paying for overtime or expedited placements, you can work ahead to ensure those shortages never happen in the first place.

​1. Overtime vs. Proactive Supplemental Staff

Simply reducing overtime hours can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line, as much as 50% per worker (assuming workers make time-and-a-half). But the economic benefits go beyond the immediate dollars saved. 

When you have more workers on the floor, each person is better rested, more focused, and can be more productive during shifts. Not only does this increase the value of labor for each worker, but it also reduces the risk of expensive errors down the line. 

2. Avoiding Last‑Minute Placements

When you work with an experienced healthcare staffing agency, you can expect agreed-upon rate structure, ramp-up periods, and service-level agreements that keep shifts filled proactively.  

3. Lower Recruitment and Onboarding Costs

Finding talent is expensive and time consuming, especially in today’s tight market. The longer job posts stay open, the longer you’re incurring those costs: job advertisements, internal recruiter time in finding candidates, manager time in interviewing and selecting people for the roles, etc. 

By virtue of our expertise and connections in the market, staffing agencies are able to tap our networks of credentialed and pre‑vetted healthcare professionals, including passive or “hidden” talent you couldn’t access on your own. 

The Power of a Long-Term Agency Partnership

Strategic healthcare staffing partnerships give your organization a scalable way to reach the right clinicians, in the right place, at the right time, while strengthening regulatory readiness and operational resilience.

Here at ProPivotal, we offer access to broader talent markets and niche skill sets, accelerated onboarding timelines, and assistance with forecasting future needs based on our experience with other health systems

We have a strong partnership mindset and act as an extension of your workforce planning, recruitment, and quality teams. This enables us to set you up for success not just when a surge hits, but every month of the year. 

In fact, in the past five years alone, we have placed 2000+ assignments of CNA’s, LPNs, and other direct care workers. Review our experience with the Commonwealth of MA here!

Learn more about our healthcare staffing services here.