Iman Abuzeid, MD

New Nurses are Already Planning to Quit. Here’s How We’re Fixing That.

Jun 15 2022

By now, it’s no secret that burnout and staff shortages are dominating the concerns of today’s nurses. But they’re not alone. Those same issues weigh heavily on recent nursing school graduates, posing serious questions about the field’s long-term employee pipeline and the impact that will have on patients, health systems and nurses themselves.

Today’s nurse graduates are tomorrow’s nurse leaders. To better understand their states of mind, we conducted an analysis of data from 400,000 nurses on the Incredible Health platform as well as a study of recent nursing graduates. Notably, the majority of these students are the next generation entering the workforce, Gen Z. Gen Z nurses are the fifth generation entering the current U.S. nurse workforce and come with a new set of challenges and expectations for their jobs.

The overall results of the study are concerning and reveal a generation entering the field in a state of anxiety:

75% of those surveyed cited staffing shortages as their main concern.
55% of the new graduate nurse population plans to leave the field before retirement.
Only 15% of recent nurse graduates feel highly confident in finding a job that will meet their expectations.

Helping new nurses thrive

New nurses, Gen Z or otherwise, largely want the same things when starting their careers: effective onboarding and training, a supportive work environment, and a manageable caseload.

That sounds straightforward, but we’ve heard from many nursing grads that finding such a position is frustratingly difficult.

Patricia R., a Gen Z nursing student who graduated about six months ago, told us, “A lot of places are understaffed and don’t have the resources that they would usually have, like a formal orientation that’s long enough for a new graduate.”

That matches our survey data: 79% of new nurse respondents reported feeling overloaded or overwhelmed during their onboarding process and noted inefficient training systems as another common challenge.

Jennyfer G., another recent nursing student graduate, told us that it was common for new grads to train one another. That is particularly concerning since 41% of new nurse respondents to our survey said on-the-job training was the most important consideration when considering resources provided by employers.

Building Products for New Nurses

To better serve the new nurse grad population, we launched our New Nurse Graduate Suite – a free suite of products that includes the expansion of the Incredible Health hiring marketplace and job matching to support new graduate nurses, individualized career support, and a personalized advice platform. Empowering nurses with tools designed specifically for them to find a career that exceeds their wants and needs is critical to retaining this desperately-needed talent within the field.

We’ve already seen great success with these new products for both nurses and providers:

A hub for new nurse talent: Since the products were introduced in March 2022, Incredible Health has increased the number of new grads on the platform by 200x and as much as 20% of new talent registrants on our platform are new graduate nurses.

Where employers find who they need: Almost a third of employers on Incredible Health are hiring explicitly for new graduate roles. Of those, nearly 60% accept associate’s degrees as a minimum education requirement.

Enabling nurses to live where they want and learn what they want: One in four candidates hired via Incredible Health changes states for a new job and 62% of employers on Incredible Health are open to cross-training.

Finding nurses the specialties they want: We’re seeing new nurses hired into a wide range of specialties, including medical-surgical, labor & delivery, and telemetry.

New nurses deserve to feel supported during their job search and on the job. At Incredible Health, we hope our products will ease their anxieties about the industry, alleviate burnout, and accelerate their careers. With the launch of our New Nurse Graduate Suite, we are committed to providing a delightful experience for nurses and hospitals alike, continuing to improve the job search process for new nurses, and decreasing burnout in hospitals across the nation.

If you’re a new nurse looking to start your career, check out our job search resources here: https://www.incrediblehealth.com/new-grad/

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Technology Speeds Hiring of Qualified Permanent Nurses

Feb 28 2022

The U.S. is experiencing a critical nursing shortage that is expected to continue through at least 2030.¹

And the U.S. isn’t the only nation experiencing a nursing shortage. A recent report from the World Health Organization noted that the world may be short 5.7 million nurses by 2030.²

More than a third of U.S. hospitals say their nursing vacancy rate is now greater than 10%.³

The average turnover rate stands at 19%.⁴ The Health Resources and Services Administration projects that more than 1 million R.N.s will hit retirement age in the next 10 to 15 years.⁵

And some experts forecast that by 2023, health care will be 1 million nurses short.⁶

That’s one million open nursing positions and millions more patients unable to get the care and attention they need.

Read white paper

The Financial Impact of Nurse Turnover

The average cost of nurse turnover to an organization is between $37,700-$58,400 per nurse, with additional challenges on the horizon.⁷ Total R.N. turnover costs the average hospital between $5.2M–$8.1M annually.⁸

While the cost to train a nurse varies amongst organizations, the Journal of Nursing Administration estimates that replacing a nurse costs $82,000 before onboarding and training even begin.⁹ In response, nursing leaders and H.R. management have had to implement new strategies to hire and retain nurses.

What nurses want

Nurses who remain in nursing do so because they love their profession. And those nurses who leave one health care system often seek a position with another.

According to proprietary Incredible Health data, when seeking a new employer, nurses consider these points:

Career advancement and opportunity for upward mobility
Shift availability and flexible work options
Reduced commute time or relocation
Compensation

We conducted a poll of three Los Angeles area hospitals:

Hospital A offers the highest salary
Hospital B is the best-known hospital
Hospital C is the fastest to hire nurses

At first, the results surprised us. Hospital C hires the most nurses per month, despite the fact that their competition has a more prominent brand and higher compensation. Here’s what sets them apart: speed.

Why does speed matter? 68% of nurses accept the first offer they receive, and 61% accept it even if a second or third offer has higher compensation, according to proprietary Incredible Health data.

An efficient hiring process creates a fantastic first impression. Candidates feel valued and important, and the positive first impression reflects well on the rest of the health system.

The Incredible Health Difference

Incredible Health flips the script, with health systems applying to nurses, not the other way around. Nurses join Incredible Health for free tools, community, and to find new jobs. Incredible Health’s software pre-screens active job-seekers and custom matches nurse candidates with the right role at the right employer. Software automatically schedules candidates’ first phone screen, and the healthcare system’s HR team takes over, completing hiring manager interviews and the offer process.

Hiring managers find our algorithms and analytics efficient and accurate. Our custom algorithms recognize over 70 nurse specialties and 250 skills, including specific ICU and OR skills to find the right hire. Incredible Health candidates undergo a rigorous pre-qualification process that screens for both skills and preferences. We then match nurse candidates with roles that meet both the hiring manager’s and the candidate’s needs.

Incredible Health allows recruiters to spend less time on administrivia and more time building relationships with both candidates and hiring managers. By focusing on the humans in human resources, hiring specialists can be innovative, flexible, and creative—enabling them to attract and hire more nurses.

Less Turnover and Greater Retention

According to the healthcare research firm Advisory Board, average bedside R.N. turnover in 2020 rose to an all-time high of 19%. This jump, up nearly 2% from 2019, also represented the most significant annual increase in seven years.¹⁰

Nurses hired with Incredible Health have a 15% higher retention rate at one year, compared to nurses hired through traditional channels. We help nurses complete a thorough job search, accurately match skills and preferences to the right role, and allow recruiters more time with each candidate, ensuring greater job satisfaction and less turnover.

Overall, more than 500 health systems and hospitals have more successful new hires and greater retention when they trust nurse sourcing and pre-screening to Incredible Health. Ready to hire nurses faster? Let’s talk.

Veteran Product Executive Joins Incredible Health to Scale Platform

Feb 22 2022

Written by Iman Abuzeid, MD

We’re thrilled to welcome Yair Livne as Incredible Health’s Vice President of Product.

Yair comes to our team after 8 years spent at Quora, where as the Vice President of Product, he:

helped scale Quora to over 300M monthly unique visitors
built its data science team and helped form its data-informed culture
oversaw the business model creation and monetization of its products, including its ads product and auction-driven marketplace
led the internationalization of Quora’s product into almost 30 languages

We sat down with Yair to learn more about his background and his plans for the future at Incredible Health.

How did you start your career in product?

I found my way into a product career by accident! While I was running data science at Quora, I was pulled in to run our feed team as a temporary Product Management lead when the previous lead left. That temporary position turned into a full-time role as Quora’s machine-learning-driven feed became more central to our product strategy. Over time the role grew in scope considerably and within two years, I was running the product management team at Quora.

Tell us more about your role at Incredible Health. How does product experience impact how both nurses and health systems interact with the platform?

To me, product is the key piece at the intersection of the experience both nurses and health systems have on the platform. We need to orchestrate a delightful experience that allows nurses to simultaneously showcase their backgrounds, skills, and career objectives while matching them with the right roles so health systems can find the most qualified talent. This requires the platform to run an efficient and intelligent marketplace that is able to make both nurses and health systems successful while providing elegant touchpoints that keep both sides engaged.

What brought you to Incredible Health?

There are three things that drew me to Incredible Health:

The mission. I’m drawn to mission-driven companies and Incredible Health’s mission to empower healthcare professionals to find and do their best work was extremely compelling to me. There is so much to build and do for this critical population and I am grateful to be part of a company that is putting in the work to help.

The team. I was super impressed with Iman and everyone else I met before joining the company. It was clear that the organization was not only making a huge impact but also building a strong culture around product and excellence that I felt proud to join.

The opportunity. Incredible Health is just getting started. There’s a huge market to change and millions of careers we can impact. I’m excited for the road ahead.

What are your priorities for you and your team in 2022?

Recruiting for my team is a big focus as we need to scale up our product management bandwidth to keep up with engineering and the rest of the company. From a product perspective, I’m aiming to do pursue two priorities in 2022:

Improve the efficiency of our marketplace so nurses and health systems can find success at higher and higher rates, especially as we onboard more nurses and health systems.
Build out our product offerings for nurses beyond the core job search functionality. For example, we are seeing success with the advice platform we launched in mid-2021 and we look to build upon that success to help nurses not only find, but also DO their best work.

[We’re hiring! View our open positions here]

Have you had an experience with a nurse that made a positive impact on you?

Our first child’s birth got very stressful because the baby’s pulse dropped a lot during labor and the attending doctor was quite stressed and nudged us towards a C-section that we didn’t want. The head labor and delivery nurse was the voice of reason in the room. She was able to give context, calm us as parents, and clarify when things would become truly concerning. Her expertise and steady hand saved the day for us.

What interests are you exploring in your free time?

A friend and I recently spent a few months building a consumer app for community managers with the goal of letting people who run in-person communities have a one-stop-shop for all of their needs, from community growth to monetization. Being a real developer for the first time was a great learning experience, and also helped me build more empathy and understanding for the challenges facing my engineering counterparts.

My family and I also recently moved to New York and are having a blast exploring the city and all it has to offer.

Incredible Health Hires New VP of Customer Success to Increase Health System Satisfaction and Build Strategic Partnerships

Jan 04 2022

Written by Iman Abuzeid, MD

We are delighted to welcome Sara Sweat to the Incredible Health team as our new VP of Customer Success.

Sara brings nearly 20 years of experience to her role at Incredible Health, having successfully led sales, performance coaching, and client management teams across Payer, Provider, and Channel Partner segments. Prior to joining our team, she worked for amazing healthcare technology organizations like Change Healthcare and Teladoc Health, where she drove tremendous results:

Over 700% revenue growth across enterprise clients during her tenure at Teladoc
Oversaw and led $200M+ in annual revenue from the Account Management division and formed a brand new Account Management Performance Optimization function at Change Healthcare
Even as an individual contributor, before her last 10 years of people management, Sara drove a $7M increase in gross annual revenue while routinely achieving between 105% – 200% at Change Healthcare

On top of this impact, Sara attained a Masters degree in Counseling and is currently pursuing her executive coaching certification.

We sat down with Sara to learn more about her background and the impact she’s already having at Incredible Health.

What are examples of recent problems Customer Success solved for Incredible Health hospitals?

Many of the hospital recruiters we work with are carrying huge requisition loads, and no matter how much they hire, the need keeps growing. They’re on the front lines, too.

Our process is designed to work in partnership with them – ensuring they have what they need to work creatively within the parameters of their open roles to find top talent their hiring managers otherwise may not have seen.

One of our hospital clients in Texas had multiple open supervisor roles and no internal candidates. By getting specific about the needs, our team updated our matching algorithms and uncovered numerous qualified candidates. The recruiter we worked with was so relieved and shared that they would have had zero candidates to present – if not for our partnership.

A different client was really struggling to get engagement from their internal team on our platform. We created a new training module, engaged the leadership team, and implemented new processes to create transparency into where talent was getting stuck in the hiring process. As a result, they hired six RNs with Incredible Health in 21 days.

We see things our clients sometimes don’t because of our unique vantage point – successfully hiring in multiple markets. By regular monitoring, turning data into insights, and sharing best practices, one of our California-based clients was able to decrease their average time to hire from 46 days to 22 days – all in just two months.

What are the most important things your team does to help customers succeed?

Our customers entrust us with a sacred duty – helping them find the best possible nurses to care for their patients. Through our customer partnerships, we are directly impacting the quality of care in our country. So, it’s not a duty we take lightly.

Clients come to us – not only for the experienced and specialized nursing talent we provide but for the expertise and consultation we offer in optimizing hiring practices.

The Customer Success team helps clients remove barriers to speed: strengthening their hiring funnel, creating unique best practices, and making it intuitive and easy to review and interview highly qualified candidates. As a marketplace, we’re armed with a plethora of data from our platform, and our customer success team packages that into clear and actionable insights. It’s inspiring to watch how quickly and efficiently our clients can achieve their goals when we optimize these processes.

What is the most common (or surprising) piece of advice you give to customers?

By far, the most significant asset a hospital system has when hiring experienced nurses is speed. Our algorithms, talent advocate team, and customer success team members do the work of finding and connecting clients to top talent. Still, speed is only possible in the context of a collaborative and iterative partnership.

My most common piece of advice to customers is to invest the time to build that kind of partnership with us. We’re only as effective as our relationships allow us to be, but together we can be…well…incredible.

What brought you to Incredible Health?

So many things. But, for me, at the end of the day – it’s about the mission.

I’ve been in healthcare technology for most of my career, but I actually got my start as a recruiter. I’ve been there – trying to balance an organization’s urgent and immediate needs with the time it takes to find and vet top talent.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to the nurses and the hospital systems that have been on the front lines of this pandemic for all of us. It feels like the very least I can do – to help our nurses find the right job for them and help hospitals find the right talent for their organizations – so they can continue doing the life-saving work we all so desperately need.

What are your priorities for you and your team in 2022?

Our first core value as a company is customer obsession. And, while that’s everyone’s job at Incredible Health, our Customer Success team is the face of that commitment. So, we’re constantly learning, looking for ways to create value, and being good stewards of the trust our customers place in us.

The most significant change you’ll see in our Customer Success team next year is growth. Our results are resonating with new employers, so we will continue to scale next year to meet the need and maintain our strong customer experience.

Specifically for 2022, you’ll see this team add rigor and enhance our internal processes to strengthen our partnerships with our customers. We are also excited to continue rolling out cutting edge features from our product roadmaps, and features our customers have requested, built by our world-class product and engineering teams. We are always learning and improving.

And, you’ll see us offer more industry trends in our consultation with our clients – helping them see around corners and navigate the ever-changing landscape of nurse hiring.

Have you had an experience with a nurse that made a positive impact on you?

At the end of a painful battle with pancreatic cancer, my mom spent about two months in a skilled nursing facility in hospice. As is often the case during end-of-life transitions, I was my mother’s advocate and practically lived at the hospice center.

It was a challenging and stressful time for our family, but there were a few nurses in particular who made all the difference.

The doctors were great, but it was the nurses that helped make those final months both bearable and meaningful for my mom. They didn’t just administer care, but infused caring into everything they did.

What’s a memorable piece of feedback an Incredible Health customer shared with you?

The most memorable pieces of feedback are always about our partnership. Clients like the ones quoted below have a felt difference in their workload and their enjoyment of recruiting due to the way we partner with them and the results it drives. That’s what motivates us every day.

“I have been recruiting for 30+ years, and I felt like I had seen everything. Incredible Health is so different, you have thought of everything we could need! What you are doing is awesome. Give my kudos to your entire team, especially the folks that built this! We have tried so many things, but this is IT!”

“I sincerely appreciate our partnership. It’s an ABSOLUTE pleasure to work with you, and truly your partnership is contributing to our success. I can’t thank you enough for your time and working with my team surrounding platform questions, candidate engagement, and your insights. The Incredible Health platform is easy to use, my team also finds it to be very user-friendly, AND we’re getting some great candidates.”

What interests are you exploring in your free time?

Mental health advocacy is a vital need in our country and it’s so important to me to be a voice in that discussion. After earning my Master’s degree in counseling almost a decade ago, I’ve had the privilege of being a part of the mental health community in middle Tennessee.

I serve on the Partnership Council of an amazing non-profit counseling agency – The Refuge Center for Counseling – and get to lead the occasional psycho-educational or support group focused on grief and trauma. So, when I’m not at work, you can usually find me tucked away in a corner reading books about epigenetic trauma. That’s totally normal, right?

Top Nurses in the Nation Turn to Incredible Health to Plan and Manage Their Careers

Dec 08 2021

How experienced nurses are getting the best permanent jobs, faster

By: Iman Abuzeid, MD

Despite the nation’s demand for qualified, permanent nurses among one of the worst labor shortages in history, nurses consistently report long timelines in their job search and difficulty finding the right role. Even worse, they often never hear back from health systems they have applied to, despite the urgent need for nurses.

Nurses are the backbone of our health system and they deserve a partner that helps them succeed at every step in their careers – whether it is kicking off the job search, fulfilling their continuing education courses, or understanding potential opportunities. That’s why nurses across the nation are turning to Incredible Health. We enable nurses to quickly find their dream permanent roles and get support in planning and managing their careers, while also helping health systems hire and retain top talent.

We’re excited to share that in the last 12 months alone, the number of nurses on our platform has tripled. Not only are we attracting nurses in volume; we’re also helping the highest qualified nurses in the nation to manage their careers and get hired in top permanent roles:

Two-thirds (66%) have three or more certifications compared to the national average of 40%
Nurses have an average of 11 years of experience, and 38% have more than 10 years of experience.
Nurses hold an average of three certifications, including certifications for key specialties like ICU and OR, with some nurses having as many as 15 certifications.
67% of nurses are trained in at least one of 45 specialties, including the ICU, OR, Emergency, Cardiac Cath Lab, and Labor & Delivery. 14% of nurses are managers.
61% of nurses hold a BSN degree or higher, which is particularly important for Magnet-designated hospitals that are part of Incredible Health’s platform.
Nurses reviewed by Incredible Health’s network of over 500 hospital partners receive an average of 3 interview requests from employers, with an interview request being sent every 90 seconds.

Challenging the status quo

At Incredible Health, we flip the script. Hospitals apply to nurses, not the other way around, allowing busy nurses to interview at multiple health systems, complete thorough job searches, and confidently choose their new role. Nurses using Incredible Health get hired three times faster than national averages – in under 20 days.

Our innovative platform is free for all nurses, who can use it as a one-stop shop to find their dream permanent roles and plan and manage their careers. We are constantly adding and updating features to our platform. A few nurse favorites include:

Salary Estimator – Incredible Health’s Salary Estimator, based on real-time data from the marketplace, helps give nurses a better idea of what they should expect to make based on geography and specialty, further enabling nurses to make more informed career decisions.
Free Continuing Education Courses – Incredible Health offers 100+ premium American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) accredited continuing education units (CEU’s) free of charge to ensure nurses are always up to date with their licensing requirements, and to ease their financial burden of the $240 million spent annually by U.S. nurses out of pocket for continuing education.
Nurse Community & mental health tools – Two features added during the pandemic include the Incredible Health Nurse Community, a social network community built exclusively for nurses, and the Daily Nurse Journal, a digital journaling platform. These products were designed to help nurses build community, seek support and advice, and reflect on their workdays to help combat the high stress and burnout that is pervasive in the field.
Personal Talent Advocate – Each nurse on the platform is paired with a Personal Talent Advocate who can provide interview coaching, share resume tips, and help evaluate their job offers.
Mobile-optimized nurse onboarding – Nurses can take advantage of iOS, Android, and mobile web applications to make it even easier to use Incredible Health and find and do their best work.

“When I last applied for a job 17 years ago, it was through someone I knew. It is quite intimidating to start the process of finding a new role, no matter how much experience you have, and Incredible Health did all the heavy lifting for me,” said Kim Mctamney, RN. “I was looking for a NICU job and in less than a month on Incredible Health, I got the staff job offer for exactly what I was looking for.”

Top Hospitals Use Incredible Health to Hire Top Nurses

Incredible Health’s solution helps nurses find more fulfilling positions and stay in them longer, a value hospitals recognize. When nurses are happier and hospitals have fewer staff shortages, patients get higher quality care.

Earlier this year, we announced that 60% of the top-ranked hospitals in the United States work with Incredible Health for their permanent staffing needs. Our network of hospitals also benefits from a 15% higher retention rate with nurses hired through Incredible Health compared to nurses hired through traditional channels at one year.

Our network of employers includes academic medical centers, community hospitals, and major health systems, including Johns Hopkins Health System, Stanford Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, and HCA Healthcare. Hospitals on our platform include both union and non-union hospitals, academic and community hospitals, as well as Magnet and Non-Magnet designated hospitals.

We started Incredible Health because we believed nurse hiring was fundamentally inefficient for both nurses and health systems. Our mission from day one is to help healthcare workers find and do their best work, and we see this as another milestone in realizing our goals.

Are you a nurse looking to take your career to the next level? Sign up here. Our career tools are always free for nurses.

Are you a health system interested in how Incredible Health can increase retention and shorten your permanent nurse hiring to 20 days or less? Sign up for a free consultation here.