In Partnership with Imperium Group
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a weakness in the United States’ healthcare system: how valuable doctors, nurses, and other professionals are recruited, hired, and retained. “Our healthcare employees are among the finest in the world, yet the rising number of patients in our hospitals and the constantly fluctuating staffing shortages proved that we need a new approach,” says Dr. Alena Fuchs DHA, MSN, RN. “I was very concerned that unless solutions were found, it would be the patients who would ultimately continue to suffer. With that in mind, I decided to use my ten years of experience in healthcare to innovate solutions, and I founded RPSP Healthcare Consulting Group.”
She explains that healthcare administration seemed like the best place for her to make the largest impact on the most people. After all, while doctors and their patients are the most visible parts of any facility, behind closed doors there is another world operating, one that is responsible for supporting and facilitating those interactions.
“I wanted to enhance patient care through improving healthcare administration but knew I had to further my education first,” Dr. Fuchs recalls. “I went back to school and earned my master’s and then my doctorate. That, combined with my extensive experience, gave me the specialized knowledge I need in order to help improve the process for providers, patients, and intermediaries.”
After founding RPSP Healthcare Consulting Group, Dr. Fuchs put together a team of dedicated industry professionals and set out to transform a huge industry whose talented workforce is held back by outdated policies and procedures.
The company’s healthcare consultants work with clients as diverse as hospitals, government agencies, long-term care facilities, clinics, and medical groups. While the scope of their services is broad and includes HR and management, staffing improvement and adequacy, EMR technology implementation and selection, and business strategy, their approach is painstakingly detailed.
“Most of our clients have the same goals: to smooth their operations, lower the costs associated with the hiring and training of new employees, and reduce the need for travel nursing staff, who are expensive and temporary,” Dr. Fuchs says. “However, as you can imagine, with such a diverse client list, there is no one-size-fits-all way to accomplish that. Part of our job involves really digging into the organization’s history and processes so that we can pinpoint exactly where an improvement can be made. Very often it isn’t something big that must be done – just the opposite. A small, strategic change can lead to an enormous impact for the organization.”
Through RPSP Healthcare Consulting Group, Dr. Fuchs has been able to assist more hospitals, clinics, and agencies with strengthening their administration processes and, in turn, improving the recruitment and retention of nurses and other staff members. In the long term, this is also making the organization more competitive in terms of their costs, which is good news for patients and providers.
“Remember: so often, we are not doing a major overhaul of the organization,” she says. “Many of our clients already have considerable strengths. What we are doing is finding those weaknesses, tiny though they may be, that are holding them back and providing solutions. When that happens, the organization can truly reach its goals, including with its staffing needs.”
Dr. Fuchs believes that in a country with over 6,000 hospitals alone, RPSP Healthcare Consulting Group is only beginning to see the impact of its efforts to improve healthcare administration.
“We plan to expand from state to state, helping more organizations to finetune their administrations and strengthen the hiring of key staff,” Dr. Alena Fuchs states. “At RPSP Healthcare Consulting Group, we prove that effective, long-lasting change starts when you step into the problem, roll up your sleeves, and use your experience to innovate solutions. Then, when you are finished and step back to see the results, you get the satisfaction of watching everything click as it should – including in America’s healthcare system.”
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.