Under Pressure: Making the Case for Staffing in Tight Financial Times

While the idea of under pressure makes for beautiful diamonds and a great David Bowie/Queen collaboration, the headwinds and pressures that are coming with today’s landscape of medical reimbursements, many organizations turn to quick cost savings measures through staffing downsizing and service offering reductions. 

With healthcare systems under growing financial strain, justifying staffing needs has become increasingly complex. Even as procedural volumes rise and supply chain complexities increase, funding and FTE approvals remain elusive. This resource distills frontline strategies and real-world insights from the Power Supply Advisory Group to help supply chain leaders build a stronger case for their team’s staffing needs—one data point at a time.

1. The Disconnect Between Workload & FTE Allocations

In many organizations, supply chain teams are being asked to either do more with the same staff counts, or to do the same with fewer people—even as surgical volume grows, SKU counts multiply, and new responsibilities like capital sourcing or recall management are added. The problem? Leadership often doesn’t fully understand the complexities of each task or the strain on stretched teams.

Key Points:

• Track how often new tasks are added without headcount changes.

• Use volume growth (e.g., case load or item master expansion) to show how demand has outpaced staffing.

• Justifying FTEs requires speaking the financial language of administration.

• Capturing productivity through means other than just the number of items handled, the number of contracts managed, and the dollars saved.

  
  

2. Building the Business Case: Data is Your Best Advocate

While budget conversations can be challenging, members emphasized the importance of tying FTE requests to complex data. Whether it's a backlog of POs, increased cycle time for replenishment, or delays in capital purchases, even the number of clinical hours away from the patient's bedside, every inefficiency adds cost somewhere—and that can be measured.  GPOs often offer an organizational dashboard that shares benchmarks, but these can be extremely high-level in terms of justifications.  Supply Chains need to focus on understanding the work and how to align data behind it to justify staffing decisions that bring value.

Key Points:

• Calculate baseline level staffing before working to add to the supply chain offering.  What is the minimum needed to “keep the lights on and the doors open”

• Quantify how staffing shortfalls are contributing to delayed POs, inventory shortages, or increased overtime.

• Use productivity dashboards or KPI benchmarks to show misalignment between workload and available labor.

  
  

3. Partnering with Finance: Speak Their Language

Finance teams think in terms of ROI, risk, and cost avoidance. Supply chain refers to value, service, and delivery.  To make a stronger case, supply chain leaders must translate operational needs into financial impact. If a delayed PO causes a surgery delay—or if overworked staff are making costly errors—those risks should be part of the conversation.

Key Points:

• Tie staffing gaps to lost revenue or increased vendor costs.

• Collaborate with finance to model how improved staffing could reduce premium freight, overtime, or clinical downtime.

• Consider moving away from traditional metrics to justify and tie asks back to value and what it gives back to nursing time at the bedside.

  
  

4. When Data Alone Isn’t Enough: Operational Storytelling

Sometimes the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Advisory Group members shared that pairing metrics with operational narratives—like detailing how a vacancy led to a failed capital purchase or a recall oversight—can make the case more compelling.

Key Points:

• Share real-life examples where limited staffing led to measurable disruption or reputational risk

• Invite leadership to shadow teams during peak hours to witness workload firsthand.

  
  

5. Creative Approaches to Justify or Extend Capacity

When FTE approvals are off the table, some organizations are exploring alternative solutions like outsourcing specific tasks, leveraging interns, or shifting non-value-added work off internal teams. These strategies aren’t perfect, but they can help buy time or free up bandwidth.

Key Points:

• Consider hybrid roles that cross departments to justify shared staffing.

• Reassess current workflows to identify duplication or underutilized automation.

• Seek ways to offset some labor costs by partnering with the vendor community to support clinical care.

• Keep track of the total cost of doing business with outsourced vendors.  It is necessary to calculate the potential of lost opportunities for future ROI discussions.

  
  

6. The Long Game: Building a Culture of Visibility

Making the case for staffing is not a one-time event—it’s an ongoing effort to create transparency around workload and resource needs. Leaders must continuously track, report, and communicate supply chain labor trends to ensure they remain visible at the executive level.

Key Points:

• Create a recurring KPI report that ties team output to organizational priorities.

• Use dashboards to demonstrate how service levels change with staffing fluctuations.

  
  

Conclusion: From Justification to Just Action

The path to better staffing isn’t easy—but it starts with visibility, consistency, and a willingness to tell the whole story. By combining real-time data, financial framing, and operational insights, healthcare supply chain leaders can advocate more effectively for the resources they need—and build a system that recognizes the actual cost of being understaffed.