Staff Scheduling Impacts Patient Care. Here’s How to Ensure Your ER is Always Prepared to Care for the Patients in your Community.

Thanks to technology, healthcare data is more accessible than ever. The Meaningful Use campaign, and the subsequent adoption of Electronic Health Records across the country contributed fields upon fields of new data to analyze. 

While we all agree that departmental productivity depends on having the appropriate number of staff deployed at the right place, at the right time, and at the right price, we also probably agree that it is easier said than done. Many healthcare leaders leverage float pools to address staffing needs, only to find new problems developing after their establishment.

Using data to drive decisions seems like an obvious choice when managing labor. However, selecting the most appropriate data to analyze is easier said than done, as healthcare systems continue to collect more and more information throughout the patient stay.

Many healthcare executives are concerned that patient care will suffer when they are challenged to reduce labor costs. However, leaders often overlook opportunities to better align staff with patient workload.