Why You Should Cross-Train Your Medical Assistants

If your healthcare facility is short-staffed, having just one staff member call in sick can throw off the workflow of the practice. With employee shortages on the rise in the healthcare industry, scenarios like this are all too common. So, how can you keep your operations running smoothly?

The solution is simple: cross-train your medical assistants to cover a broader range of tasks. Cross-training improves your facility's operations and minimizes your staffing needs. For successful cross-training, it's important to select the best career training programs, accept only proven healthcare certifications and employ effective medical assistant training strategies.

Let's take a look at some key points to keep in mind when cross-training your medical assistants.

Flexible Medical Assistant Training is Essential

When implementing a cross-training plan, you can't expect staff members to just pick up new skills from colleagues in other areas. Formal training is a must, particularly when employees need to develop new skills that are significantly different from their daily expertise.

Online career training programs provide formal instruction and allow students to progress at their own pace. In particular, MedCerts offers Medical Assistant programs that are conducted entirely online:

• Clinical Medical Assistant
• Clinical Medical Specialist
• Clinical Medical Professional

These programs prepare students for their certification exams without intruding on their work schedules.

Cross-Training Alleviates Staffing Shortfalls

One of the most serious threats to health care today has nothing to do with the politics of medical insurance or the rising costs of medical care. Instead, the real problem is a simpler one: staffing shortages.

There's not always an adequate supply of qualified nurses and support staff to meet the growing medical needs of the country's population. Even when qualified candidates can be found to fill positions, more and more healthcare facilities find themselves adopting leaner staffing models in order to keep costs in check.

When you're operating with a lean staff, having just one or two employees call in sick can cause major issues. That's where cross-training comes into play, alleviating many of the risks of staffing shortages. Providing your medical assistants with the training needed to handle a wider range of duties results in a versatile staff where everyone can pitch in and help out as needed.

Cross-Training Provides Improved Career Pathways

Cross-training your medical assistants doesn't just offer advantages for your healthcare facility. It's also a win for your employees. An expanded skill set provides new opportunities for employees and sets them up for career advancement.

As a healthcare facility, you can reinforce your relationship with employees by providing the training and education they need to thrive. Cross-training should go hand-in-hand with career pathing—helping your employees chart out what their careers might look like over time. When you provide your staff with the opportunity to learn and take their career to the next level, you tend to hold on to quality employees and reduce overall churn.

Employee shortages can wreak havoc on your facility's daily operations, but it's not easy to find and recruit qualified staff members with the appropriate healthcare certifications. Cross-training your medical assistants to handle a wider variety of duties lets you build higher-quality staff and run your facility more efficiently.

For flexible, cost-effective training, consider MedCerts's Clinical Medical Assistant career training programs. Medical Assistant training with MedCerts combines online instruction with on-the-job experiential learning. This solution meets the needs of both students and employers.

At MedCerts, we offer three online Medical Assistant programs depending on what certifications students are interested in.

Contact us for more about how MedCerts can benefit your healthcare facility and offer solutions to your staffing issues.