Jackie Larson, President, Avantas
The inception of COVID-19 has highlighted and introduced a new set of challenges to healthcare organizations. Emergence from this situation in the strongest position possible and returning to more normalized operations quickly require a deliberate recovery strategy.
While each strategy must be tailored to each specific healthcare organization and location, there are four key areas to focus on to accelerate post COVID-19 recovery: revenue enhancement, operations and workforce flexibility, cost containment, and talent acquisition and retention. The focus on these initiatives revolves around two specific solutions: staffing optimization and data-driven technology.
Staffing Optimization – Operations and Workforce Flexibility
An assessment of current staffing plans will determine if any inefficiencies are causing potential gaps between nursing and finance. The assessment evaluates productivity and financial impact, and provides grids that meet productivity, minimizing costs and maximizing the ability to cover patient demands at every census point.
Additionally, an assessment of an organization’s current state of float pool and contingent staff against a proven methodology and identifies opportunities in areas such as technology and analytics, people and culture, and processes and workflows can determine how well staff is being utilized. It is crucial to develop a framework and concept for float pools, and methodology and procedures for core and contingent staff that are consistently applied across the enterprise.
Data-Driven Technology
When it comes to scheduling healthcare staff, there’s a lot to take into account, making it a complicated process. But the implementation of master scheduling tools that ensures staff are utilized optimally according to ratios, needs, and locations provides tremendous benefits – including delivering time back to a nurse manager or scheduler to devote to more pressing clinical duties. Additionally, real-time reporting and data analysis tools enable enhanced decision making.
On top of scheduling software that uncomplicates the process, a workforce planning dashboard provides the blend of key HR, Financial, and Operational metrics needed to make sound decisions regarding talent resources. Identifying metrics such as number of core staff needed versus how many are being utilized can help multiple departments plan for the future and decide how to optimally use staff.
By tailoring an approach specifically for your organization, it can help you achieve near-term revenue capture, margin recovery, and cost containment through the alignment of workforce needs to various patient volume scenarios. While working on short-range goals, we will help you develop strategic initiatives to benefit the long term, such as physician/clinician engagement and retention strategies, workforce capacity planning, and improved transparency to allow for more flexible use of staffing resources.