Hospitals define premium pay as any rate of pay above the base employed rate. Premium pay can include shift bonuses, weekend differentials, overtime, contract labor, and more.
Premium pay is of vital importance when staffing 24/7 patient care operations. By design, it acts as a financial incentive where needed to support balanced shifts and ensures we have the right staff, in the right place, at the right time, to provide optimal patient care.
Read MoreNurse vacancies and contract labor rates have soared in the post-pandemic environment. As a result, many hospitals are currently evaluating alternative care delivery models to support the staffing ratios needed to provide quality patient care and retain staff. This newsletter reviews four alternative care delivery model options, ideas to attract applicants, and considerations for successfully implementing a change to your current care delivery model.
Read MoreWhile monthly performance tracking to budgeted goals is critical to the success of any business, hospitals tend to have more complex drivers of budget variance than other industries. Because workforce constitutes 50-60% of hospital spend and is widely considered the most controllable expense, labor is often the focus of budget variance conversations.
Read MoreDepartment productivity drives hospital FTE performance to budget. High performing organizations proactively and thoughtfully cascade realistic FTE budgets to department productivity goals. After working with many hospitals and health systems over the years, our team has identified the top 5 labor budgeting practices that drive favorable FTE performance. These tactics significantly minimize budget risk by ensuring all risks can be mitigated through department action plans.
Read MoreLabor benchmarks are commonly used in healthcare to inform leaders about opportunities to gain efficiencies. However, we often see leaders incorrectly use benchmark as a management tool. When this happens, we miss the opportunity to dig deeper to understand the opportunity and create a plan to improve. This can leave department leaders exasperated with chasing quarterly moving targets, but worse still, this approach can invite short sighted decisions that ultimately pose risks to patient care.
Read MoreIf you’ve worked in healthcare operations leadership for more than 18 months, you have likely heard the term “Benchmark.” If you’ve led a department for more than 5 years, you’ve likely been on the wrong side of a benchmark comparison (or know a poor soul who has). This newsletter explores the data review required to ensure accurate submissions, ultimately supporting useful performance comparisons for all participants.
Read MoreTraditional on-call programs impact department culture and finances. Call-back premium pay rates increase department labor expenses, and the demands of the call schedule can contribute to poor staff satisfaction, high turnover, and difficulty recruiting. In many cases, alternative solutions are more advantageous than the traditional on-call model.
Read MoreWhile procedural departments are significant contributors to hospital revenue, ensuring staff are available to perform emergent cases 24/7/365 is a constant challenge. On-call programs are a common staffing solution for off-hours needs, but they can drive significant recruitment and retention challenges. Particularly in small departments, on-call and call-back requirements can be a key driver of the “fatigue factor” for staff.
Read MoreContract labor resources are a true asset to healthcare organizations when utilized appropriately and managed well. However, many organizations find it challenging to align contract labor to their staffing needs while controlling overall labor expenses.
High performing organizations quantify anticipated needs for vacancies, leave of absence support, and seasonal workload volume fluctuations while ensuring contract labor is never used inappropriately through attentive management.
Contract Labor is not a Dirty Word: Lessons learned in leveraging contract labor and travelers to ensure the right staff are in the right place at the right time to support excellent quality care to patients.
Read MoreAcross the country, hospitals have been forced to close their doors due to revenue headwinds and increasing costs due to the COVID 19 pandemic. All are working to closely manage costs to keep their doors open for the communities they serve.
Perhaps the most approachable and impactful strategy to reduce cost while improving care is demand matching – the process of reviewing staff schedules and patient workload volumes to align staff with volume by hour of day. Even if you’ve done this in the past, it’s important to reevaluate as patient volume patterns have shifted in hospitals across the country.
Demand Matching: a data-driven approach to ensuring your staff are in the right place at the right time.
Read MoreExperienced leaders know the turnaround time for hiring and orienting staff creates a greater vacancy burden than is typically seen on paper. When staff are unavailable to work, we rely on premium labor such as overtime or travelers to care for our patients, which can adversely impact our culture, outcomes, and hospital finances.
Hiring ahead is a strategy that allows us to quantify the true vacancy burden and hire the perfect number of FTEs and reduce avoidable premium pay.
Read MoreThe impact of unavailable staff can lead to overreliance on premium labor and overtime leading to unnecessary labor spend. The hire ahead strategy can help ensure you have the right staff available to provide quality patient care by factoring in historical turnover and recruitment efforts to determine the department’s hire target.
This article walks through the hire-ahead exercise and how you can begin completing this at your facility.
Productivity targets help hospitals balance resource requirements with financial goals by budgeting specific hours for the workload in each department. The process of setting productivity targets can present a challenge to both nursing and finance leaders as they work together to identify the ideal goal. By using zero based staffing models, industry leaders ensure that the right staff are in the right place at the right time.
Read MoreHospitals establish and manage to productivity targets to ensure that the right number of staff are available to care for patients. Balancing financial, clinical, and operational goals, thoughtful productivity targets ensure the department is not overstaffed or understaffed, supporting operations, quality care, and patient satisfaction with efficiency.
When hospital finance sets productivity budgets, it is very common for department leaders to ask questions like, “Why is this my target?”, “Where did this number come from?”, or “This can’t be right.” “Is this really how my peers are operating?”.
Read MoreTop performing hospital leaders are always searching for innovative ways to reduce the cost of healthcare without adversely impacting care and services provided. Labor spend constitutes over half of total hospital expenses and is widely considered the most controllable expense. Daily productivity management can help hospitals reduce expenses without having to furlough or lay off staff members. A successful strategy includes two primary components: increased performance visibility through daily reporting and managing improvement through department action plans to remedy missed targets.
Read MoreTop performing hospital leaders are always searching for innovative ways to reduce the cost of healthcare without adversely impacting care and services provided. Labor spend constitutes over half of total hospital expenses and is widely considered the most controllable expense, leading to employee furloughs and layoffs in the current environment. However, there are alternatives.
Read MoreRevenue degradation experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting hospital finances across the country. Suspension of elective surgeries and procedures threatens the viability of many healthcare organizations. After decades of experience in the for-profit sector, our team has summarized some of the top impact expense management strategies. Continue reading for a high level view and check out our article for more details.
Read MoreRevenue degradation experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting hospital finances across the country. Suspension of elective surgeries and procedures threatens the viability of many healthcare organizations. Even after suspensions are lifted, it is uncertain if patients will schedule elective surgeries and procedures due to their fear of contracting COVID-19. Healthcare organizations report that Emergency Department and physician visit volumes have also declined as people are complying with stay at home orders throughout the United States. High performing hospitals find themselves looking for opportunities to reduce expenses, even if temporarily, to avoid layoffs and keep doors open to serve their communities.
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