This Chicago health system uses LotusOne to cut staffing costs

As the healthcare industry continues to face provider shortages—potentially short 81,180 physicians by 2035, for example—some hospitals are coming up with unique ways to address staffing issues.

Chicago’s Rush University System for Health is no exception. In March 2024, the hospital system incorporated new technology from LotusOne, which has a platform that tracks hospital staffing for 6,000+ facilities.

This tech led to a 40% decline in staffing spend, health system leadership said in a press release, and helped reduce Rush’s dependence on contract workers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, temporary staffing was a huge cost to health systems, which generally prefer permanent workers.

“We’ve been able to reduce our overall spend in contingent labor, which is really the highest form of premium labor expense,” BJ Krech, associate VP of talent strategy at Rush, told Healthcare Brew. “That’s probably the biggest benefit.”

How it works. LotusOne helps Rush see all contract workers across its nearly 13,000-staff system. In the past, the health system would have had to check information from 30–40 vendors, Krech said.

“It’s a one-stop shop where all of the vendors and all of the temporary labor are aggregated into the platform,” he told us.

The platform is used by everyone from the operations team to nursing leaders to human resources to finance to supply chain professionals at Rush, he added. Anyone can see who is currently working at the facility, who is booked to start and when, what their pay is, and when their contract is up. It also offers bigger-picture information like what the aggregate spend is and what the financial trends are over time.

“By unifying data, planning, and execution in one platform, they transformed how teams recruit, manage contracts, and make smarter staffing decisions across the organization,” Jason Drucker, chief product officer at Aya Healthcare, which operates LotusOne, told us in an emailed statement.

LotusOne’s platform also helps users review market rates to compare their pay against others.

“That was visibility we really didn’t have at aggregate level before we were using the platform. So it helps us to manage our expenses from that perspective,” Krech said.

Rush can also see if there are temporary staffers who live locally, which has helped find permanent employees.

As a result, Krech said the platform has reduced the health system’s spend on staff by millions and helped to almost completely eliminate the temporary staff at some locations, like its Rush Oak Park Hospital.

Outside look. Ben Teicher, spokesperson for the American Hospital Association, said in a statement that the healthcare workforce is a “precious resource.”

“Among other approaches, hospitals implement integrated workforce platforms that enable more staff-driven scheduling, data-driven decision-making, and lowered administrative burden,” he said.