Author: Jackie Larson

“Right person, right place, right time” is one of the oldest mantras in workforce management. Every healthcare provider and staffing vendor talks about it. But what does it really mean, and how do you accomplish it? Coordinating the delivery of care 24x7, and doing so across an enterprise with any number of different service lines...

“Innovative” is an adjective frequently used to describe many companies and business leaders. It’s used so frequently you could argue it’s lost a bit of its cachet, and become almost commonplace. How many leaders would say that their company is not innovative? I’m guessing very few. Even if a president or CEO won’t go out...

Spring is just around the corner, and with it comes the conference season. Every year there seems to be a handful of new conferences added to the already loaded slate of state, regional, and national events. It’s difficult as a “vendor” to pick and choose which to attend. As a provider organization I know it’s...

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” This quote from Aristotle has been hanging around the Avantas office since we were founded. It means a lot to us, and is a driver of our core values. One of those values is “Learner.” This can mean a lot...

In case you missed it, Becker’s Hospital Review recently published a story on the “decline” of COO positions. While the data presented was not specific to healthcare, it did cite universal reasons for the position being eliminated by attrition or outright, as with Carolinas HealthCare. As a company that provides a methodology and tools to...

For more than ten years we have been promoting centralized resource management as one of the keys to optimizing labor for hospitals and health systems. But, setting up a Resource Management Center (RMC) does not ensure success and it does not automatically result in savings or improved placement of resources. The RMC, if developed to...

In July, Smart Square System Admins and other key leaders from across the country came together in Omaha for a few days of networking, education, and fun. Although Avantas facilitates quarterly all-client calls (in addition to bi-weekly individual client calls and site visits at least twice a year), the annual event is the only formal...

Technically, all hospitals adhere to acuity-based staffing. Staffing grids are created by each unit with the purpose of developing a financially responsible ratio of staff to provide care for the average acuity of patients. Every year these grids are evaluated and the average acuity may be adjusted based on patient population. When a patient on...

If you have been a follower of the Avantas blog or are a regular reader of our eNewsletter you are probably well versed in the three KPIs I’ll outline in this article. I write and talk about these quite often, and I do so for two main reasons. First, they are what we like to...

As our clients know, Avantas is blessed to have engaged, smart, and energetic team members who are as committed to learning as they are to providing excellent service. One team member who is always building her knowledge and gaining expertise is Jenny Korth. Jenny is a senior consultant and one of our experts driving the...