This article is brought to you by Zipline. The article is based on a virtual panel discussion with Kendall McGrath, vice president of sales at Zipline. The panel took place on January 27, 2022.

Staffing is the most-often cited challenge among skilled nursing providers in today’s operating environment. From recruiting new employees to retaining existing ones, skilled nursing leaders are facing an unprecedented staffing landscape for the foreseeable future.

But there are some bright spots and best practices skilled nursing operators can utilize, including attracting brand-new workers, according to a recent virtual panel featuring Kendall McGrath, VP of sales for Zipline, an integrated technology platform that serves the skilled nursing industry with compliance tools, operations reporting and visitor auditing features, among others.

Addressing The New Normal of the Skilled Nursing Industry Head On

The new normal of the skilled nursing industry requires that care providers deal with a historical labor shortage head on. More than 400,000 nurses have left the industry and experts indicate it will take years to return to pre-COVID staffing levels. This means that skilled nursing facilities will need to deal with these issues in ways such as removing the burdens that take caregivers away from essential caregiving. With 95% of SNFs still paper-pen based, according to Zipline research, this creates a lot of manual effort and labor to manage, adapt and respond to requirements for staff.

Aside from COVID-related challenges many adolescents are also not showing interest in the field as a whole.

“When you look at putting a circle around what those different generations are looking for, [millennials and Gen Xers] are looking for things like flexibility and work-life balance. They want career progression, they want to have a digitized workforce” McGrath says.

Taking Cues from International Markets

Taking a look internationally at what other markets, like Australia, have done to alleviate burden on staff shows that creative approaches are required to manage the labor shortage. One of Australia’s largest senior care providers, St Vincents, has changed its entire operating model for staffing so that it can respond and future-proof staff, including having dedicated sections of the hospital for COVID patients, managed by asymptomatic staff or those in isolation.

Additionally, the organization offers programs to help the employees navigate through the onboarding process.

“We actually partnered with [St Vincents] to develop end-to-end onboarding programs,” McGrath says. “Being able to offer a really strong learning and development program not only benefits the operators because they get better output for their staff members; it also really provides that level of engagement with the staff as well.”

Attracting New Staff

With the pool of staff getting smaller, it’s more important now than ever before to create an environment which can retain existing staff. The implementation of innovative technologies that can remove the burden of administration, compliance and manual tasks is one way to ensure the well being of staff. Right now, nurses can spend up to four hours a day on managing admin burdens, Zipline has found, which requires additional staff to then provide essential caregiving.

With the Biden Administration proposing fines of up to $1 million per facility if caregiving is impacted, this becomes critical.

“Zipline implemented a home care solution, identifying at what stage in the client’s journey should we be thinking about more permanent in her residential care.,” McGrath says. “At that point in time, actually working with the care attendant involves more communication, to try and get them thinking about the next step and what that would mean.”

Zipline is one such technology that can be implemented in six weeks, to automate visitor and compliance management for SNFs. By automating check-ins, health screenings, COVID vaccination status and evidence approvals with AI, nurses can take back hours of their day spent on administration and focus on caregiving.

To watch the full discussion on video, please visit:

Zipline automates visitor and compliance with a software platform and in-person kiosk devices, making it easy for staff, visitors & contractors to book in advance or quickly sign in on site. This has proven to save on contingent staff costs and improve the customer experience. To learn more about how Zipline is streamlining healthcare compliance, visit https://zipline.io/.