Eddie Poole, Manager for Agency and Contract Personnel, Greenville Health System
We're certainly cost-conscious and rate-conscious when it comes to agency staff, but we're looking at quality first. We want to make sure that we have a highly-qualified person. We’ve been able to do that with the help of Qualivis and the agencies we work with.
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Without our agency and contract personnel, we couldn’t run our business. That’s the bottom line. We’ve been in a growth mode for the past three to five years, and it’s hard for us to keep up from a hiring standpoint. Travelers provide such a valuable addition. We wouldn’t be able to run our units without travelers, and our nurses would not be able to take time off. They’re a vital part of our business.
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I have a staffing agency background. I know what it’s like to be on the other side of the desk.Qualivis has been great to work with. They're responsive to our needs. Whenwe have questions, issues or problems, they're Johnny-on-the-spot in terms of, "What can we do to help you? What can we do the make the situation better for you?"Qualivis has been a great partner with GHS.
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One of the big challenges we have had here at GHS is the invoicing process. We work with a lot of agencies, and we have a lot of invoices. It's a very cumbersome process. That's one of the things I identified really early. How can we fix that within the system that we have? The Qualivis personnel have been outstanding in looking at, "How can we revamp this process? How can we change the process? How can we make it easier for you?"
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Reducing our agency spend has been a big priority here at GHS, as I'm sure it is at a lot of hospital systems. (Qualivis has) been outstanding in helping us look differently at the relationship between GHS and the agencies that provide us a service so that we can reduce that cost but still maintain the quality nurses and quality staff that we receive. Qualivis has been very supportive of that. They're really open to whatever ideas we have to make it a good partnership, as opposed to some organizations that will say, "Well, this is the way we do things."
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We're using our agency staff to supplement our regular staff to allow those nurses to have better work-life balance, to allow them to be able to have PTO time when they need PTO time, to work the shifts they want to work. As people go through different stages of life, their priorities change. We may have an employee whoinitially wants to work as many hours as they can. Then as life changes happen maybe now they're in a situation where they want to cut back. By having supplemental or agency staff in place, we’re able to allow them to do that.
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Qualivis is the piece of the partnership that ties it all together. They are the conduit between us and the agencies. So, if there are issues, it’s easy to go to them and say, “Hey, we’re having an issue with this employee or this agency. They're able to help troubleshoot that and look at it from a neutral standpoint.
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Where Qualivis has helped us with Joint Commission review is through their software, through the management system we use, because we're able to have all the information at our fingertips. When a reviewer is here and they need information on Sally Smith who worked in ICU and she was here six months ago we're not scrambling around looking for that information. We can pull the information from the management system and send it right over.
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I think it's a very smart move on their part to broaden their product offering, if you will. I do get excited because we enjoy the relationship with Qualivis. We want to continue to do business with them, but we don't want to be so dependent on just travel staff. We want to look at how we might convert our travel staff to regular GHS employees. How can we maybe get nurses that aren't going to be travelers? Any way we can broaden the pool of candidates that are going to be exposed to GHS and the great story we have to tell, we're all for that.