Ohio hospital rolls out scheduling/staffing solution for its entire organization, saving time and money.
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Many organizations have realized the benefits of rolling out an automated scheduling/staffing solution for their nursing units. These benefits include reducing costs by cutting overtime expenses, decreasing the use of expensive outside contractors, such as nursing agencies, and more effectively deploying labor resources. Imagine the financial and productivity gains that an organization would achieve if it applied this technology throughout its enterprise. |
Ohio hospital rolls out scheduling/staffing solution for its entire organization, saving time and money.
Many organizations have realized the benefits of rolling out an automated scheduling/staffing solution for their nursing units. These benefits include reducing costs by cutting overtime expenses, decreasing the use of expensive outside contractors, such as nursing agencies, and more effectively deploying labor resources. Imagine the financial and productivity gains that an organization would achieve if it applied this technology throughout its enterprise.
Our organization, Medina General Hospital, is beginning to realize these gains after an enterprisewide implementation of an automated scheduling/staffing solution. And the benefits are adding up quickly, considering that, on average, each department manager is saving six hours per pay period using the automated features of the system, versus manually inputting employee schedules for their departments. For our organization, it was clear that implementing the solution on an enterprisewide scale would help us achieve several of our goals, which included:
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Reducing, and in many cases, eliminating the need for department managers to input employee schedules manually;
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Integrating scheduling/staffing data with our time and attendance system to eliminate duplicate data entry that decreases efficiency and increases the chances of data entry errors;
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Measuring employee productivity throughout the organization;
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Improving security by knowing which employees are scheduled to work and where in the event of an emergency or a natural disaster;
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Decreasing labor costs for employees and outside contractors by proactively monitoring real-time salary cost data.
Based in Medina, Ohio, Medina General Hospital (MGH) is a 118-bed organization with more than 1,000 employees. Our satellite facility, the Brunswick Medical Care Center, offers a variety of medical services, including an immediate care center, physician offices, radiology services, and physical and occupational therapy services. Overall, MGH provides care to more than 31,000 patients a year.
MGH has used the Payrollmation time and attendance solution from api Software Inc. (API), Hartford, Wis., since December 1998. Our users had been satisfied with the design and workflow of the system, so it made sense for us to consider API’s ActiveStaffer product when it came time to look at automated scheduling/staffing solutions in April 2003. Although we evaluated solutions from other vendors, we decided in September 2003 that API would best integrate with our time and attendance solution. In addition, API had several customers that used both solutions, demonstrating to us that the solutions truly did integrate as promised.
Three Types of Training
We identified nine pilot departments for the initial roll out planned for April 2004. Since our implementation was to be enterprisewide, we wanted our initial users to include more than just the nursing units that typically use scheduling/staffing solutions.
We identified nurse managers who were proficient at using the ReportXpress module within the Payrollmation system, presuming these users would be able to adapt these skills to use the ActiveStaffer solution.
Then, we identified the departments that had complex scheduling needs, such as the emergency department, family birthing center, lab, nutrition services and radiology. It was important for us to show that the solution could meet the complex scheduling needs of these various departments if we were to win the confidence of other departments. We also included the human resources department in the early roll out, so they could demonstrate how the system works. All of these departments had different scheduling styles, which would show other users that the system was flexible and could meet their needs.
It was important to hold the training on consecutive days to maximize learning. The lunch break offered during each session turned out to be a great time for the users to discuss the system and how it would be used. Department-specific training included two three-hour sessions. These sessions helped users troubleshoot their schedules and discuss daily system maintenance functions.
Following training, the nine pilot departments went live with the new scheduling/staffing solution on April 19, 2004. After go-live, open lab time was held every Thursday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. This time allowed users to get questions answered, and provided uninterrupted time for users to work on their schedules. During open lab time, trainers held a conference call with API to discuss specific users’ needs. These conference calls took place for four months, until the majority of user issues were addressed.
The new scheduling/staffing system was rolled out to the remaining departments over eight months, beginning in May 2004 and ending in December 2004. Each department had six to eight weeks of training before going live. Open lab time was available for 15 months—from April 2004 through July 2005—seven months after the final department went live.
Increased Efficiency
MGH’s payroll policies greatly helped users adopt the scheduling/staffing system. MGH’s payroll policies dictate that each employee must have an active schedule within the payroll system to be paid correctly. This payroll policy helps our organization compare hourly employees’ scheduled hours to actual hours worked. Although salaried employees do not clock in when they arrive and leave, the schedules help us track when and where they are supposed to be working—important to know in case of an emergency or a natural disaster.
The most noticeable benefit of using the system is the increased efficiency and time savings that our managers have realized. All department managers are responsible for the schedules of their employees. In the past, this meant that each of our 37 department managers manually created schedules. On average, each department manager saves upwards of six hours per pay period using the automated features of the system, versus manually inputting employee schedules. With 37 department managers, that six-hour-a-pay-period time savings adds up to an $180,000 annual savings in salary costs.
We also expect the system to help us realize substantial savings in overtime costs. In the past, our time and attendance system was configured to pay by the tenth of an hour, or six-minute increments. Employees who clocked in a bit early or clocked out a few minutes late for their shifts inadvertently incurred overtime costs toward the end of the week. With the new scheduling system integrated with the time and attendance system, scheduled hours can be compared with actual hours to determine if overtime hours were authorized.
Our nursing units currently are understaffed and our patient flow is increasing. Therefore, we still are incurring overtime and nurse agency costs. However, the system does help us more proactively monitor and predict these costs, and we anticipate it will enable us to curtail them in the future. Finally, having active schedules in place for all employees helps us prepare for emergency situations and natural disasters where we may be required to evacuate departments or locate employees following an unexpected event.
Future Plans
Our organization plans to use the scheduling/staffing system and the time and attendance system to help us measure employee productivity. Currently we are evaluating vendors of patient acuity software so we can determine staffing needs in the nursing units based on patient acuity.
To further increase the functionality of the scheduling system, we make ActiveStaffer Web accessible, to allow employees to securely access their schedules from any standard Web browser. Eventually, employees will be able to self-schedule and possibly bid on available shifts. These capabilities will further decrease the workload on department managers and increase efficiency throughout the organization.
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