Labor

As hospitals and health systems face increasingly complex issues, including recruiting and retaining hard-to-fill positions, rising inpatient acuity, and new competition, they must deploy a strategic, integrated, and disciplined approach to labor management and operations.

BRG’s Healthcare Performance Improvement team works with hospital and health system clients to take an in-depth look at the drivers of total workforce costs and efficiency. Our labor experts include clinicians and experienced industry leaders who take the time to understand each organization’s unique needs. We collaborate with providers to create and implement operational plans that leverage staff tactically and strategically to improve operations, productivity, and quality measures, often without requiring a reduction in headcount.

Our sophisticated business-intelligence tools link external benchmarks to internal quality outcomes, and we build monitoring systems and provide productivity and process-flow resources and tactics to frontline managers so they can sustain performance. Our team also goes beyond staffing and productivity to evaluate improvement opportunities in scheduling, overtime, agency usage, and recruitment and drive savings in the often-overlooked areas of overhead costs, including IT, marketing, human resources, legal, and more.

While labor cost management opportunities and savings can vary greatly, hospital and health system clients who work with us typically achieve savings ranging between 5 percent and 10 percent. Beyond financial benefit and increased productivity, the structure and processes BRG implements also often improve patient and employee satisfaction, reduce turnover, lift quality scores, and eliminate the need to rely on costly medical staffing agencies.