July poll results: Perioperative leaders are tackling labor costs, staffing flexibility

Perioperative leaders often have to make critical decisions, not just in the middle of an operational crisis but also somewhere in the edges—the routine but still high-stakes moments where leaders need to adjust resources or absorb costs under tight constraints. The economic margin for error continues to narrow, and many of the traditional options leaders once relied on to manage labor pressure—bonus programs, on-call pools, and retention incentives, to name a few—have become depleted, cost-restrictive, or insufficient for today’s demands.