This article is sponsored by Tactical Back Office. In this interview, HME Business sits down with Todd Usher, Founder, Tactical Back Office, to talk about the progressive approach of Zero Risk Staffing in today’s challenging hiring environment. He explains how Tactical Back Office is helping organizations fill critical positions with right-fit employees to meet a variety of circumstances and needs, and he discusses his customers’ response to this practice as it continues to gain traction across the home medical equipment space.
HME Business: What career experiences do you most draw from, in your role today?
Todd Usher: My experience in the industry has taught me the challenges of training and hiring, both of which have been difficult over the years. Training often involves on-the-job learning or brief mentorship, which, depending on the role, has yielded mixed results.
Hiring, especially in the post-pandemic environment, has been particularly challenging, like hitting a wall. Navigating new phenomena like ghosting and quiet quitting requires us to understand the changing landscape and adapt our strategies daily. These experiences have significantly shaped our approach to staffing and I draw on them constantly to refine our process as the hiring environment evolves.What is Zero-Risk Staffing, and what is
Tactical Back Office bringing to the home medical equipment space to help clients achieve it?
Consider the traditional hiring process: when a position becomes vacant, you place an advertisement, collect resumes, and hope the preferred candidates remain interested until an offer is made. The process — from vetting resumes to conducting interviews — often results in only a fraction of candidates moving forward. Even then, some may not show up for their start date or return after their first day, making hiring a resource-intensive gamble.
Tactical Back Office offers a solution that eliminates these challenges. We provide a pool of pre-vetted candidates ready for interviews, with a guaranteed start date, removing the uncertainties of ghosting or underperformance. Our candidates are pre-trained and prepared to integrate into
your team. Should they not meet your expectations, additional candidates are readily available.
This approach shifts the hiring risk from the provider to us, ensuring a risk-free hiring experience. Providers have the option to interview candidates or directly onboard them from Tactical Back Office, significantly simplifying the process.
What job functions or positions can Tactical Back Office help home medical equipment companies fill?
We are equipped to staff virtually any role within an organization, from the front door to the warehouse. Our services extend to a wide range of positions including intake resupply, billing, private insurance, government collections, hosting, patient collections, prior authorization submissions, scheduling, and operations roles, as well as dispatchers and respiratory therapists. Every position we offer comes with the assurance that the individual will be trained and ready to contribute from their first day with the provider.
What is your perspective on training in the current home medical equipment staffing environment, and how can Tactical Back Office help?
From our experience, many regional, national, and local companies rely heavily on on-the-job training due to the lack of a formal training program and a system to track training on various topics, equipment, and processes. Tactical Back Office, however, offers a formal training program that covers all associated topics, preparing individuals to be work-ready from day one.
We’ve transitioned from ad-hoc training to a structured program that our staff members greatly appreciate.
Our personnel are equipped to excel in their roles from the start, facilitating smoother interactions with clients, patients, doctors, offices, and medical assistants. This preparedness instills competence and confidence in them, enabling our clients to work with someone who is already knowledgeable about the basics, such as CMS, Medicare, and what PAR stands for, for example, eliminating the need for basic explanations.
By the time our staff members join a client, they only require minor adjustments to align with specific local needs, such as insurance policies or equipment offerings. We handle the foundational and intermediate training, allowing clients to focus on fine-tuning their new hires to
their specific operational requirements.
How does the Tactical Back Office staffing process work, and what steps can customers take to ensure they find the right employees for their organization?
At Tactical Back Office, we internally hire and train individuals for 8 to 12 weeks, ensuring they’re fully prepared for their roles as per client requirements. Our customers have shown a preference for two main options: firstly, they can interview candidates before onboarding, a choice many currently exercise. Alternatively, they can trust us to assign candidates directly, opting out of the interview process entirely. Some clients start with interviews and, over time, gain confidence in the quality and competency of our candidates, eventually preferring direct assignments. This approach simplifies the process for them, embodying our zero-risk promise by saving interview time and relying on our judgment for quality staffing. Essentially, clients provide a start date, and we ensure the right personnel are in place by then, streamlining the staffing process.
Our clients have grown to depend on us for their staffing needs, reassured by our consistent ability to train and prepare individuals for specific job functions without them having to manage the process. This trust underscores the effectiveness of our training and staffing approach.
Looking at success stories, how have home medical equipment organizations been responding to the Zero-Risk Staffing approach?
Over the past year, we’ve adopted a specific approach that has garnered an overwhelmingly positive response regarding our training and onboarding process. Zero-Risk Staffing encapsulates our longstanding practice of removing the hiring risks for providers, such as the dangers of ghosting, no-shows, and underperforming employees, and transferring those risks to us. We take on the responsibility of interviewing, vetting and qualifying candidates before they’re placed with a client.
By the time someone is ready to join a client, Tactical Back Office has absorbed all associated risks, ensuring that clients face no such concerns. They receive a well-prepared individual, set to start on a predetermined date, fully equipped to perform the requested job functions. This method ensures that the client benefits from a risk-free hiring experience, with a quality candidate ready to contribute from day one.
In a couple of words, finish this sentence: “In the home medical equipment industry, 2024 will be the year of…”
…more effective staffing resources and an improved business model that enables the HME
industry to increase profitability.
Editor’s note: This article has been edited for length and clarity.
Tactical Back Office provides staffing solutions that save you time and money — a lot of money!
Our offshore personnel are delivered to you trained and ready to start working on day one. Visit www.tacticalbackoffice.com and let’s discuss how TBO can be your staffing solution partner.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact sales@agingmedia.com.