4 Reasons Why Hospital Scheduling Software is a Necessity

10 Nov, 2016 | Tags: , , , ,

4 Reasons Why Hospital Scheduling Software is a Necessity

Running a hospital is a major operation. If you are Johns Hopkins Hospital, it means dealing with over 10,000 employees, ranging from full-time nurses to part-time janitors. And that means 10,000 schedules. WhatTimeDoIWork.com aims to relieve that organizational burden by providing hospital scheduling software that is one of the most advanced on the market.

Employee scheduling software is no longer optional in the healthcare industry, but a necessity. Every patient deserves your full attention and care, which requires a full team. If that team means 200 nurses – and only 175 show up due to miscommunication – patients will be overlooked and tasks will fall through the cracks, which means mistakes may be made. And when it comes to saving lives, patients can’t afford mistakes.

4 Reason Why It is Necessary:

  1. One Click Scheduling:

Do your employees constantly call you asking for their schedules? Are you having to constantly ask them to be patient because you are still painfully laboring over writing out each shift?

Not anymore.

Instead of manually typing in each entry, WhatTimeDoIWork.com allows you to simply point and click to schedule your hospital staff. Our process is so streamlined, you will probably do a little dance in your chair out of pure excitement. If schedules change or members of your team call in sick, no more calling each one of them individually. The software will automatically notify each employee of the schedule changes, as well as allowing them 24/7 online access – No more calls asking “What Time Do I Work?”

Since hospitals run around the clock, we realize the importance of clear communication so every surgeon and surgical tech is on the same page – Ready to help patients and save lives.

  1. Conflict Free Schedules Every Time

There is no way to avoid employees requesting time-off or having varied availabilities due to second jobs, vacation time or sickness. This information can easily get lost in all of the other paperwork, so with our scheduling software, you can keep all of that information in an organized and simplified area…online. This way you have access to all schedule requests at anytime.

In the past, you would have to check your request books and calendars to know when you can schedule each staff member, but our program automatically sends conflict alerts while you are scheduling your employees so you don’t make a mistake.

Employees simply submit their requests online so it is displayed on their schedule instead of a scrap piece of paper. If you think this will make your life easier, your staff will be thankful too! Employees also receive automatic reminders about their shifts, so you can eliminate no shows.

When your whole team shows up, more patients can be seen, which means less time in the waiting room and higher patient satisfaction.

  1. Accessible Employee Contact Information

We keep your employee’s contact information in an organized online folder so when you need to contact 50 staff members, you can save yourself the time of searching down a contact list to find their numbers. You just type in their name and voilà.

An even larger undertaking is contacting your entire staff about weather conditions or a large catastrophe that will affect the ER that day. Good news. You have the option to simultaneously call every person in your contact list in seconds with one click. You can also send out mass emails and/or text messages to selected employees or your entire staff.

  1. Save More Money

You might be thinking…How does paying for a new program save me money? Well, it’s simple. Our software automatically calculates labor costs daily and/or weekly while you create your staff schedule so you can more accurately budget for the year.

It also saves you countless scheduling hours throughout your week, so you can devote more time to urgent tasks. You can even save, copy and reuse previous employee schedules if there is no need for changes. WhatTimeDoIWork.com caters the platform to fit your exact needs, so we work with your hospital team to make sure the site is as easy to use as possible for your employees.

If your hospital is in need of a scheduling software, sign up for a FREE trial today. Once you see the ease of the software, you won’t go back.

We provide pay-as-you-go pricing and require NO service contracts or additional fees. The software updates automatically and comes with a free program wizard to walk you through the learning curve. Help us help you give your patients the treatment they deserve by signing up for a 30 Day Free Trial today – No credit card needed!

Why Should You Use a Hospital Staffing Software?

21 Oct, 2016 | Tags: , , ,

Managing the staffing function in a hospital can be a demanding task. Even in a small health care institution, it can be hard to predict patient census with the aim of availing the right number of staff. The management requires the right scheduling tools to help them predict inpatient volumes and help them schedule their shifts more effectively. There are many fantastic features that this software offers and uses a variety of strategies that guarantees that the hospital is well staffed. To help streamline the process, a hospital staffing software should be used, as it provides fantastic features that help to simplify inpatient care. In the end, this software guarantees the patients of high quality care, while also getting the hospitals more organized. Here are reasons why you should consider using hospital-staffing software.

It allows for automated schedule creation

Some years ago, hospital administrators were scheduling medical staff by hand or within a self-made spreadsheet. Through using scheduling software, healthcare administrators can help simplify the entire process. This software is automated, and takes into account the needs of every staff member while allocating shifts.

Staff members can provide their opinions

In fact, every staff member who works in a hospital setting has their personal preferences that are unique from that of others. There are those who prefer working during the night while others would prefer nighttime shifts. The staff can input their requests, therefore relieving the administrators of the agony of having to follow up with each employee for their preferences. However, the system allows managers to have full control over the system because these requests may be blocked out on a day when the staffing is low or when there are other constraints.

It can be accessed from any internet-enabled device

It can be beneficial if physicians can access their working schedule anytime, anywhere. In most instances, these professionals juggle between private practice and working, so they need to stay informed through unhindered access to their schedules by using a smartphone or a tablet. If there are last time changes, the affected staff will be able to know of these changes quickly.

The system can be linked with the payroll

Competitive hospital staffing systems can be linked to the payroll, therefore enabling managers to track their employees around the clock. It is important to know that managers can link the system with the payroll system. This increases the speed and the rate of accuracy of computing employee dues and paying them on time. Because of this, payment of salaries and other emoluments can be done immediately, while minimizing the commission of errors.

Split shift capabilities

There are certain instances where split shifts may be necessary and these requests may emanate from the hospital or from some staff. The ability to split shifts is an incredibly important feature that a medical scheduling software may offer and shifts can be divided among service provides hassle free. This software is key to enhancing the efficiency and productivity of medical staff and that of the administrator. You should not take the convenience that this fantastic tool offers within your healthcare facility.

Decrease in wait time

Accurate scheduling helps to reduce hospital wait times, therefore resulting in a high level of satisfaction among the patients. It is a fact that the level of customer satisfaction that patients get is highly dependent on the staffing level. If the staffing level is at an acceptable level, patients will be attended to within the shortest time possible.

Increased employee satisfaction

There are many ways that hospital-staffing software helps to improve employee satisfaction. Through the input that employees offer, it is possible to schedule them based on their personal preferences. If they have a request for split shift, this can be honored, thanks to the feature, which the software for managing medical staff offers.

Reduces staffing costs

Overtime is quite expensive, and if not managed well can add up quickly. If you can eliminate overtime pay for physicians, nursing staff and other assistants, significant savings can be achieved. The system will avoid a scenario where an employee works for too many hours while others are working too few.

Conclusion

Healthcare facilities are under immense pressure to cut down on costs and improve their efficiency of service delivery to patients. They also want to ensure that their employees remain productive. To achieve these goals, using health-staffing software is necessary.

Hospital Staff Scheduling

06 Sep, 2016 | Tags: , , ,

Every healthcare organization faces a challenge in managing staff scheduling and ensuring open shifts are filled. It is important to note though that costs are minimized when patients are matched with the staff in such a way that patients’ needs are met and the scheduling is done professionally.

Depending on a number of factors, staff scheduling gets complicated and thus end up wasting a lot of time and resources. However, every healthcare organization is different they all share a common need in scheduling their staff.

How to Avoid Three common Staffing and Scheduling Drawbacks

Most healthcare systems experience common drawbacks in their efforts to meet staffing and scheduling. However, this can be avoided by using a new methodology referred to as the “Collaborative Staffing”. The methodology is a ground-up that enables employees to be part of the solution in deploying the workforce. This approach minimizes the labor costs and ensures optimal patient coverage. Here is keener look at the three common drawbacks and how they should be avoided.

Carrying the Staffing Process from the Top down With Limited Employees Involvement

In a “manager-directed’ approach, creating staffing plans and filling staffing needs is the responsibility of unit managers and/ or a central staffing office. This top-down approach gives very little input or insight to nurses and other frontline staff into staffing process. This makes the nurses do very little to be part of a solution in case of gaps in staff coverage. In this regard, the challenge of staffing and scheduling rests on the manager’s shoulder.

However, managers’ time would be best spent focused in more tactical initiatives such as mentoring staff quality and patients safety. This is important than spending time in the routine tasks of managing staffing coverage. Moreover, staffs know about their preferences and availability than the managers. Thus, giving them control over shifts makes them enjoy better work/life balance and an increased sense of freedom.

The feeling of working in an empowering environment brings about many benefits. For instance, nurses tend to be more committed to the organization and register high quality of care in their units. Thus, collaborative staffing is a staff-partnered process that enables employees by granting them visibility into the organizational needs. It also gives them a right that empowers them to be part of the solution. In this regard, mangers and staff are able to collaborate to fill open shifts. This considers the employee skills and preferences to ensure that the patient care needs are put into account.

Staffing in Units to Match Staff with Patient Needs across the Enterprise

The opportunity to develop a dependable staffing strategy lacks when each unit is solely involved in their own staffing. This is because it may bring about lack of transparency thus making it difficult to available staff to fill gaps in another unit. In this regard, when a nurse is sent home for low census in one unit, another one is called in to meet increased needs.

Thus, even though the one going home is more qualified and is willing to fill the shift than go home, it is not possible. This is because there is no connection made due to the lack of visibility.

Lack of Standardized Staffing Policies in the Organization

There should be consistent policies regarding overtime, incentive programs and holiday schedules in the entire organization. This is because all employees like being treated equitably and fairly. Thus, inconsistent practices in staffing can bring about perceived or actual inequities.

However, in a collaborative model system, consistency and fairness are driven by the transparency. Moreover, standardized staffing policies create equality that can lead to a more unified workforce. This ensures that workers can work together to handle the challenges of staffing and scheduling.

Collaborative staffing ensures interdepartmental visibility and communication. Everyone in the healthcare is able to enjoy the benefits like system-wide staff optimization, increased employee engagement and decreased overtime and premium labor costs.

Better Scheduling Improves Management

Scheduling is major issue when it comes to running a big healthcare. Moreover, it influences the number of the practices run and serves as a foundation to a successful healthcare business. In this regard, scheduling of physicians and staff maximizes the efficiency of the healthcare and the patients’ care.

The best way to improve your scheduling is to get an automated physician and staff scheduling application. The machine should be able to work with unique policies and rules in the healthcare organization.

Conclusion

According to Dr. Karlene Kerfoot, a Chief Nursing Officer for API Healthcare, a GE company, technology has brought a great value that is growing each day. This is because technology helps healthcare staff in performing most activities daily. Moreover, technology can also be used to manage broader job satisfaction in hospitals like staffing and scheduling.

References:

How to Avoid Three Common Staffing and Scheduling Pitfalls

http://www.emrendhi.com/tag/nursing-staff-scheduling/

Scheduling Tips for Hospital Administrators

06 Sep, 2016 | Tags: ,

Technology advances, new healthcare regulations and an aging population have all created a booming market for healthcare administrators. They are responsible for the oversight of medical facilities that range from large hospitals to nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. Hospital administrators coordinate care, manage finances, create schedules, and work with medical staff. A profession as a hospital administrator is fascinating and rewarding – each day brings new and exciting tasks and challenges.

The impact of scheduling on hospital administrators’ lives remains a big issue. Many cite balancing work hours and personal life as problematic, and others are concerned about their daily workloads. Some have cited that expectations and demands on them were increasing, while others cited scheduling per se as challenging. As a healthcare facility manager or hospital administrator, it’s imperative that you’ve a powerful plan in place in order to manage your critical staffing needs effectively throughout peak and off-peak hours. With that goal in mind, we have compiled the following scheduling tips for hospital administrators to help them manage their healthcare staffing needs around the clock.

Scheduling And Managing Rapid Needs

Developing and implementing a comprehensive staffing and scheduling procedure is a crucial element of any patient-care and staffing plan. It is necessary to partner with a healthcare staffing agency that is able to fulfil all of your supplemental staffing requirements at a moment’s notice with fully-certified, highly qualified professionals for you provide and maintain the high quality around the clock care’ and personalized attention your patients deserve.

Advance Planning

The best approach to unplanned staffing deficits would be to proactively define the action steps that need to be taken prior to the crisis. Besides helping you manage your short notice or emergency staffing needs, it’s also critical that you partner with a Joint Commission-certified healthcare staffing firm which can help you plan ahead for busy periods like holidays and vacation seasons wherein your regular staff may request concurrent time off. By planning your staffing requirements in advance, you make sure that your facility won’t be caught short handed during these critical times.

Workload Management

You will be better prepared to ensure the precise distribution of staff and resources by analyzing your staffing needs and assessing current and projected workloads. This decisive workload analysis allows you to effectively avoid procedural errors which result whenever staff members are overloaded.

Answering Calls and Managing Calendars

Calling patients, shifting appointments and rescheduling events around at a moment’s notice is a core part of the work. This is another really important part of the work of a hospital administrator. People who call medical offices typically talk to the administrator, at least at first, especially for things like scheduling an appointment or getting directions to the office. The job also usually requires lots of savvy when it comes to organizing and scheduling time. The administrator can create and manage calendars for appointments, patient consultations, and important meetings which they must keep constantly updated.

Clerical Work

The medical world is one which is heavily records-dependent. One of the hospital administrator’s biggest jobs is keeping paperwork and written files in order. Typically, this starts with patient records. Usually, the administrator can devise a system to keep files updated and accessible, which oftentimes involves computing and electronic record keeping. Most modern healthcare offices use a combination of paper and digital-based files, and organizing and assimilating these two can be a bigger undertaking than it seems.

Ensuring Compliance

The healthcare industry is regulated by numerous rules and regulations. It is the job of the hospital administrator to help with or manage the process of making sure an organization remains compliant. This might involve keeping up with the latest healthcare news relevant to the locality and type of organization.

Accept Holidays as Part of the Schedule

For many hospital administrators, working a holiday one year would mean they get the next year off. Barnes, however, will work on Christmas for the next six years straight. You can work a schedule of 7 nights on and 7 nights off which means you might not have to work on the upcoming string of holidays.

Healthcare and hospital facility management is always needed to maintain a clean, healthy environment. It’s important for medical facilities to make sure service requests are responded to swiftly and efficiently and that preventive maintenance schedules are set up so as to maintain operations without interruption.

Top Challenges Hotel Managers Face

30 Aug, 2016 | Tags: , , , ,

Running a hotel is one of the most difficult jobs yet one of the most rewarding in these times. Loaded with a variety of responsibilities, a hotel manager is supposed to look after the entire management staff. Hotel managers need to have a friendly personality, excellent organizational and time management skills to manage numerous responsibilities, such as, financial management to commercial accountability for budgeting, organizing, planning and directing all hotel services.

Managerial duties of a hotel manager include the following:

⦁ planning and organising catering, accommodation other hotel services on a daily basis
⦁ promoting and marketing the hotel business;
⦁ managing budgets and creating financial plans
⦁ controlling overall expenditure;
⦁ maintaining financial and statistical records;
⦁ carrying out detailed inspections of services and property
⦁ achieving monthly sales and profit targets;
⦁ proposing and analysing revenue management strategies;
⦁ training, recruiting and monitoring staff;
⦁ planning work schedules for individuals and teams;
⦁ greeting and meeting customers;
⦁ dealing regularly with customer and client complaints and comments;
⦁ ensuring smooth running of events and conferences;
⦁ supervising maintenance, supplies, renovations and furnishings;
⦁ dealing regularly with suppliers and contractors
⦁ ensuring effective security;
⦁ ensuring full compliance with licensing health and safety, law and other statutory regulations

Running and managing a hotel is a grueling task. There are three types of people that a hotel manager must please at all time, and they are the guests arriving at the hotel, employees / staff, and hotel’s corporate management. A hotel manager is expected to face up to his responsibilities and challenges with those people and simultaneously keep the hotel afloat.

Hotel managers usually have a tough and an unpredictable schedule. If a customer is facing an issue with such as a toilet overflow or a power outage in the room. hotel manager is summoned, since he is the man who is in charge and responsible for smooth functioning of the hotel. Below are some of the challenges that hotel managers have to confront on a regular basis:

1. Operational Challenges: A hotel manager has to ensure that the housekeeping is up to date on all the floors and room occupancy details, bookkeeping are all updated timely. He is also responsible for ensuring that the staff is well trained to handle and manage all kinds of customers and clients.

2. Technical Challenges: A hotel manager is responsible for creating occupancy reports and forecasts and also managing overbooking. He is also responsible for fixing the right price for all kinds of rooms at the hotel. He is supposed to look after the overall expenditures at the hotel.

3. Security Challenges: Hotel manager is responsible for maintaining optimal safety and security at the hotel. Having a proper surveillance system throughout the hotel property as well as automatic door-locking system in the hotel rooms that can immediately change codes when a customer or guest loses a door key are some of the measures the hotel manager must take to ensure proper security for guests.

4. Revenue Challenges: In this digital age of internet bookings, room prices vary from one website or hotel to another. It has been noted that hotel managers who carry on with fixed rates tend to miss out on opportunities that can bring them huge profits if they raise prices during holiday and peak seasons, and subsequently lowering the rates during off-peak season to encourage occupancy. Hotel managers must experiment with pricing in order to ensure and maintain a steady flow of guests as well as revenue.

5. Leadership Challenges: Hotel managers face leadership challenges in the form of industry corporatization. In this era, company structures are rapidly changing and growing more complex, which makes it difficult to ensure consistency in customer service.

A hotel manager must create and maintain team unity, establish open communication policies and make an effective information management system that can help in smooth functioning of the hotel.

6. Amenity Challenges: Hotels now provide amenities such as a coffeemaker, TV and radio as essentials in guest rooms, but not so long ago, they were considered luxury items for a hotel room. It has been noted that vacant rooms consume electricity with an average of 12 hours a day and the cooling and heating in the room costs takes up half of a hotel’s operating costs. A hotel manager is faced with increasing costs which he must encounter by devising strategies to make amenity-usage sustainable.

7. Cost Challenges: A hotel manager has to look after the increases in renovation and construction costs that often result in escalating capital reinvestment and increased capital requirements for new construction which takes time. Many clients and companies demand improvements and upgrades in the hotel’s physical condition and press for more stringent adherence to world class standards for the hotel to compete with the international hotels worldwide, which often result in escalating capital reinvestment that a hotel manager must deal with.

8. Technological Challenges: Due to the advancement in technology, hotels worldwide are adopting digital interfaces and integrating all of their workflow onto information systems, that are dramatically easier than conventional workflow systems. Many hotel managers today are taking full advantage of the new technology and streamlining their operations. This upgrade requires significant investment but there are unlimited benefits of using a dedicated information system. It also requires proper training and understanding of the interface. Most current information systems installed at various hotels have been found to be under-utilized, the main reason is hospitality industry’s reluctance to invest in refresher courses and training of their staff. To fully benefit from digital technology, hotel managers must support integration and adoption of new technology that can help streamline the workflow.

9. Customer Expectations: Hotel manager is also responsible for addressing and satisfying the ever evolving needs of his customer needs to fulfill which is his main priority. In this day and age, customers are increasingly aware and sophisticated in their use of technology and expect the same from the hotel they are staying in. Technology gives hotels an opportunity to reach out to their customers effectively and efficiently.

Hotel managers can successfully manage a hotel if they learn to confront these numerous challenges with determination and their brilliant management skills.