AlliedUP’s New Staffing Model Promises to Improve Staff Shortages and Turnover In Healthcare

In the midst of ongoing staffing issues within the U.S. healthcare industry, allied healthcare staffing provider AlliedUP is seeking to improve staff shortages and turnover through a new staffing model. By operating as a worker-owned cooperative that provides allied healthcare professionals to hospitals across the country, it seeks to upend many of the existing shortcomings of traditional staffing models.

As Milissa Ales-Barnicoat, CEO of AlliedUP explains, the current staffing and turnover issues in healthcare are hardly new phenomenons. While the COVID-19 pandemic has helped bring them to the forefront of public knowledge, the challenges AlliedUP seeks to solve have been present for some time.

Existing Issues Accelerated By the Pandemic

Healthcare staff shortages and turnover issues first became widespread public knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic, when intense working conditions caused many nurses and doctors to suffer intense burnout.

Notably, a 2021 investigation by McKinsey & Company found that 84 percent of healthcare systems were experiencing ongoing challenges with nursing workforce staffing. Sixty percent were also having challenges with achieving adequate coverage for clinical support staff. During the period of the survey, the nursing turnover rate was at 15.8 percent — a 4.7 percentage point increase from the year prior.

“While COVID-19 definitely accelerated the problem, the reality is that many of the issues contributing to current staffing shortages already existed before the pandemic,” Ales-Barnicoat explains.

“Hospitals were already struggling with high turnover and low retention. The work environment has always been stressful, but it’s more than that. Poor compensation models have created income disparity for support healthcare positions, largely made up by women and minorities. Poor leadership practices cause professionals to feel unvalued, especially when their work-life…