The Indian Health Service (IHS) www.ihs.gov awarded a contract with up to $60 million for up to five years to AB Staffing Solutions, LLC www.abstaffing.com to provide temporary staff in Emergency Departments. The awardee is to provide operations support and management services to Rosebud Hospital and Pine Ridge Hospital in South Dakota and Omaha Winnebago Hospital in Nebraska.
In the past, IHS has contracted with health professionals to address staffing challenges but this IHS contract requires the vendor to provide all appropriate department management as well as clinical staffing.
The contractor will provide a physician to serve as the full time director of each Emergency Department and other management services. It is estimated that about half of emergency departments use contracted physician practice management.
IHS is using short term funding to provide healthcare in these hospital emergency rooms while IHS reviews the administrative and clinical operations of their facilities across the region in order to develop long-term solutions.
Problems have resulted at the hospitals and actions have been taken. For example, insufficient staffing at the Emergency Department at Rosebud Hospital contributed to some patients on the Rosebud reservation being diverted to other facilities for care. Now urgent care services and other inpatient and outpatient hospital services at Rosebud are continuously available.
At Pine Ridge Hospital, at least 21 nurses and 10 medical support assistants currently working in the Emergency Department will be shifted to other hospital outpatient clinics. With these staffing changes, Pine Ridge Hospital will offer for the first time services on Saturday with clinics open from noon to midnight.
In addition to efforts to add contract staff in Emergency Departments, IHS issued a Request for Proposals http://federaltelemedicine.com/?p=4515 to find ways to improve telehealth services in the Great Plains so that more clinical appointments could be done remotely.
IHS has also eliminated some administrative impediments to health professional staff recruitments across the IHS system. This includes securing approval to offer additional relocation benefits for qualified job candidates as well as more pay for some health providers so that salaries are more competitive.