Sara Well spent 12 years as a critical care trauma nurse on the acute side. She watched again and again as her facility’s money was put into much less pressing issues than staffing and saw how it impacted not just care and quality outcomes but overall revenue.

She saw how archaic many of the systems in place for staffing were, and with her tech background realized that this comprehensive issue was a scalable solution with a huge addressable market. 

Nurses are often perceived as a cost rather than a revenue driver. They have been historically under-appreciated despite how much their presence and work directly impacts the length of stay which is not always covered by insurance.

The flaws already present in the healthcare conveyor belt were exacerbated by the arrival of the pandemic. An estimated 500,000 nurses were lost to COVID fatigue, switching to other less taxing professions. 

At the same time many new travel nursing and outsource labor companies began to pop up, luring staff away from their traditional in-house positions with the promise of higher pay. These companies then sold the nurses back to the same types of facilities they came from at a much higher cost. 

Though facilities were able to get staff quickly and easily, it was not cheap and cost them the integrity of their in-house teams.

Dropstat seeks to re-empower healthcare organizations, working with them to update and automate safe staffing processes, and give total transparent insight into their labor costs.

They see the most important relationship as the triad between patient, provider, and the organization that brings them together.

Dropstat uses machine learning and AI to predict a facility's staffing needs 60 days in advance.  are able trace increased costs of standard labor and premium labor costs whether its agency or overtime bonuses. With this data they create patterns and recommendations and feed them back to the client.

When asked about the problem of staff leaving for a $2-3 raise Sara had some powerful insight to share. 

She states that just like those serving in the military, healthcare workers see death and loss on a sometimes daily basis. But while the military has instigated an entire culture of comradery and airtight family dynamics within groups, the same is often not present in healthcare.  

Sara concludes that if a facility is able to culture hack and ensure with authenticity that nurses feel loved, valued, connected, appreciated, that they are the key to aiding the aging population, they won't have to worry about losing staff because of pay.

FOLLOW SARA AND DROPSTAT

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RELATED EPISODES

• Ep. 94: Innovative Solutions to the Staffing Shortage in Healthcare
• Ep. 71: Combating Staff Turnover & Burnout In Nursing Homes
• Ep. 42: Healthcare Workers Need Self-Care During Covid-19

After returning from military service, Eric Alvarez got his start in academia before moving to healthcare and delving into startups. It was this time working with students that led him to the idea of Grapefruit Health. 

By the year 2026 healthcare will be short by 3.2 million healthcare workers. Eric states that many of the current solutions for this problem greatly reduce performance and output while driving up costs. 

The year 2030 was always slated to be the year that our clinical aging workforce would max out, with baby boomers retiring at a much higher ratio than newcomers entering the profession. Many clinicians have either transitioned to part time or moved on to a gig economy platform. 

We have heard from various perspectives on the healthcare staffing shortage on this podcast and Grapefruit Health brings a new solution to address this monumental problem. They have created the world's first and only healthcare workforce composed solely of clinical students. 

Healthcare facilities often run programs to employ students, but this calls for a training preceptor and ultimately leads to an unproductive workflow. Grapefruit Health employees on the other hand provide assistance with remote, low acuity, high volume, repetitive telephonic tasks.

These include medication adherence, senior isolation and loneliness outreach calls, and post discharge follow up calls. All of these tasks are clinical in nature but do not require licensure.

About 10% of these telephonic tasks need a pharmacist interaction, in which case the employee will do a warm transfer to a pharmacist. This cuts down time greatly for short staffed pharmacy teams who would otherwise have to make all these repetitive calls themselves. 

Grapefruit Health offers their services at $5 per interaction and doesn’t charge for unsuccessful interactions such as when a call goes through to voicemail or a patient hangs up. 

Typically their client organizations have a program that's failing and are looking to supplement it or outsource it. After understanding the situation and what tasks and roles need to be filled, Grapefruit Health can build scripts and employ students and train them for the job in just six weeks.

Eric states that students are eager to learn with their clinical education fresh in their mind. Grapefruit Health leaves their employees with great skills and experience and even full time opportunities with the client organizations they worked with once they graduate.

FOLLOW ERIC AND GRAPEFRUIT HEALTH

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RELATED EPISODES

• Ep. 89: Take Full Ownership of Your Recruitment
• Ep. 85: 5 Strategies You Can Implement Today to Boost Your Recruitment Success Rate
• Ep. 79: Smart Hiring for Nursing Homes