Healthcare’s workforce challenges are often discussed through the lens of physician shortages and clinician burnout. But behind the scenes, healthcare organizations are facing another growing strain: operational workforce instability.
From credentialing and enrollment to provider data management and medical staff operations, administrative teams are being asked to manage increasing complexity with fewer resources, fragmented systems, and growing compliance demands.
We recently sat down with Matt Thomas, Acorn’s new Director of Development and Operations, to discuss the growing operational workforce crisis affecting healthcare organizations and why provider operations can no longer be viewed as simply administrative functions.
Q: Healthcare burnout is usually discussed in relation to clinicians. Why do you believe healthcare organizations are underestimating the operational workforce crisis?
Burnout is absolutely affecting clinicians, but operational teams are experiencing many of the same pressures. Medical Staff Professionals, enrollment specialists, and healthcare IT teams are managing increasingly complex processes while also dealing with staffing shortages, turnover, and growing administrative demands.
What makes this especially challenging is that many organizations still rely heavily on manual workflows, disconnected systems, and institutional knowledge that lives with individual employees. When experienced team members leave, that knowledge often leaves with them.
I think one of the largest struggles healthcare organizations are facing today is turnover. Whether this is from retirement or a workforce that’s had to do too much with too little and burned out, Medical Staff Professionals are leaving in droves and their knowledge is going with them. And it’s not just MSPs that are leaving. Enrollment Specialists and even healthcare IT professionals are leaving the industry as well.
Q: What are the downstream effects when these operational teams become overwhelmed?
The impact extends much further than people realize. Provider onboarding slows down. Enrollment delays increase. Data inconsistencies become harder to manage. Compliance risks rise. Revenue is delayed. Patient access can even be affected.
Healthcare leaders have traditionally viewed credentialing and enrollment as an insurance policy. If something goes wrong, there is a trail of data showing due diligence was done and liability is reduced. But if nothing goes wrong, these functions have often been viewed as cost centers.
I believe many healthcare leaders underestimate the direct impact credentialing and enrollment have on revenue.
Take a physician specialist that can bill an average of $200 per hour. From hire date to enrollment is often between 90 and 150 days. Assuming that physician sees patients for five hours a day, organizations could be losing thousands of dollars in billable revenue every month while waiting for enrollment to be completed.
And that’s just one provider.
If organizations can reduce those timelines, the financial and operational impact becomes very significant.
Q: You’ve spoken about healthcare defining compliance requirements without defining operational standards. What do you mean by that?
I think one of the biggest underlying challenges in healthcare operations today is that accrediting bodies have done a good job establishing requirements for compliance, but they have not necessarily provided guidance on how those requirements are meant to be operationalized.
“They’ve defined the ‘what,’ but not the ‘how.’”
As a result, organizations have had to establish different processes and maintain different data sets from one organization to the next to fulfill the same requirements imposed on everyone.
That creates fragmentation and inconsistency across the industry.
So how do organizations move forward? I believe the solution involves two things. First, flexible software applications that can support different organizational workflows and processes. Second, establishing best practice operational frameworks organizations can move toward and adopt over time.
The goal is not rigid standardization. It’s creating stability and predictability while maintaining the flexibility to adapt as requirements evolve.
Q: Why is this issue becoming more urgent now?
Healthcare is continuously evolving. Regulatory changes, workforce shortages, market consolidation, and shifting care delivery models continue to reshape the industry.
At the same time, healthcare organizations are being asked to do more with fewer resources.
I think healthcare software has historically been slow to evolve compared to other industries, even though healthcare itself changes constantly. Organizations need systems that can adapt quickly and help operational teams work more efficiently without adding additional administrative burden.
Operational agility matters more than ever now.
Q: What do healthcare leaders need to rethink moving forward?
I think organizations need to stop viewing credentialing, enrollment, and provider operations strictly as administrative or compliance functions.
These are operational infrastructure functions.
They directly impact provider readiness, workforce sustainability, revenue generation, and patient access to care.
The organizations that will be best positioned moving forward are the ones investing in reducing operational friction, preserving institutional knowledge, supporting their workforce, and building systems that help teams scale effectively.
Healthcare organizations cannot solve today’s workforce challenges through staffing strategies alone.
The larger opportunity is to reduce operational complexity, modernize provider operations, and build systems that better support the teams working behind the scenes.
Organizations that invest in operational agility, streamlined workflows, and scalable infrastructure will be better positioned to improve provider readiness, preserve institutional knowledge, accelerate revenue generation, and strengthen patient access to care.
Because the future of healthcare operations will not be defined solely by how organizations manage people.
It will also be shaped by how effectively they support the systems those people rely on every day.
