Northern News: If it Matters to You, it Matters to us
Welcome to the first issue of our agency-wide newsletter, “Northern News.”
We are launching this newsletter in response to feedback from our most recent staff survey.
The overwhelming majority* of our staff felt that that hearing more from the management team would have a positive impact on you. (* Results from the fall all staff survey to the question, “Please rate this statement: Receiving information from the Management Team about “how” and “why” decisions are made would have a positive impact on me, i.e. financial transparency).
Our goal is to send out a quarterly newsletter highlighting different areas and departments across Northern Human Services. Our hope is that this newsletter will aid in increasing overall transparency about the decisions we make.
In this inaugural issue, my article will focus on the key issues of concern for the management team: the staffing shortage and compensation review.
As we fine tune our communications with staff and other stakeholders, we invite you to provide us feedback about the information we are sharing.
—Suzanne Gaetjens-Oleson, CEO Northern Human Services
Workforce Shortage: A Statewide Crisis
As I am sure most of you are aware, there is a nationwide shortage in the Health Care/Human Service fields. And that our state and our region has not been immune to the effects from the shortage.
In my role as the chief executive officer for Northern Human Services, I have the opportunity to meet with the leaders from all of the other NH area agencies and community mental health centers twice each month. At these meetings, the workforce shortage and the need to increase salary rates are always key discussion points.
As I’ve promised to staff in previous communications, we’ve started to conduct a compensation review.
The first step in this process is to gather data. We are doing this now. Gathering data is important so that both management and staff will have the necessary background information required to fully understand the multiple impacts of raising salaries. There are multiple layers to look at when we make changes to the compensation scale, and each change impacts other levels on the scale. We have limited resources and need to find the most equitable way to spread the resources we have.
The Financial Impact of Across the Board Salary Increases
Northern Human Services is a very large organization (we currently have 429 employees) and because of our size, even a small increase has a very large financial impact.
To help illustrate this point, I will share the following example (keeping in mind that this is an example and not to be inferred that this is what we are planning to implement.)
If we were to raise every salary by $.50/hour, the total cost would be roughly a half a million dollars. This figure doesn’t fully take into account that we have staff employed at both 35- and 40-hour work weeks.
In order to provide such an increase, we also have to be able to project that we can sustain such an increase over time. And that means that we need to ensure an increase of any amount is sustainable over time through services we provide and the resulting revenue.
The Challenges
The human service industry is different than other businesses in that we cannot simply increase our prices in order to raise salaries; we are dependent on (state and federal) rate setting and insurance reimbursement. More importantly, we are not in control of when rate increases happen.
Our revenue is completely dependent on the amount of service we deliver and bill for. When we don’t complete encounter notes for patients receiving mental health care or complete the necessary billing to draw down from budgets for individuals receiving developmental disability services, we do not bring revenue in.
Also for mental health, if we submit billing outside of the filing requirement window; we lose revenue but still pay salary. I am explaining this at this level of detail because it is important for all staff to understand how these processes impact our ability to generate revenue, what the limitations are, and what information we are looking at as we conduct the compensation review.
Administrative Burden
Sometimes employees feel weighed down by the amount of administrative burden and wish there was less of it in order to spend more time doing what they do best — supporting the people we serve. I completely understand how frustrating this is at times. However, most of the burden is tied to rules and billing that must be completed if we want to be paid. It is also important to note that when documentation isn’t completed it leaves a void of information about what happened during the service delivery which could negatively impact the client/individual.
Please keep in mind that the more we can work together to ensure timely completion of medical notes and billing, the more revenue we will have to work with as we review Northern’s compensation scale.
Transparency
It is important that we all know where we stand and we work to do all we can to bring revenue in while delivering the best possible care we can to the individuals we serve. All of these pieces tie together, and we can’t improve one area without improving the other.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. The goal, again, is to increase transparency so that when we make decisions you all understand the “hows” and the “whys”; the message about increased transparency has been heard and your management team will be working to deliver it.
I look forward to any questions you have, to your feedback about this newsletter so that we can constantly work on improving it, and your contributions to it. Please know that your feedback is helpful and you are invited to help us work towards solutions.