The staffing squeeze: Remote hiring

Rihan Javid, D.O., J.D., founder of Edge, walks through what practices should actually do when staff keep leaving for higher pay.

Step one is internal. He says leaders need to ask whether departures are only about dollars or whether culture, expectations or workload are pushing people out. If there are internal problems, no pay bump will fix the leak for long.

Step two is facing market reality. In many communities, especially smaller or rural ones, there simply are not enough qualified people to hire. That’s when he recommends thinking beyond the local labor pool and building a stable “core” team using remote staff, whether that’s in the United States or abroad, for roles like scheduling, billing and patient communication that do not require in-person contact.

By combining a remote backbone with on-site, patient-facing staff, he argues, practices can stabilize operations, cover critical functions and stop living in constant replacement mode — but only if they are willing to be flexible and think past pre-COVID-19 staffing assumptions.