staffing Grids top tips
ENSURE CONSISTENT RATIOS
What is a staffing grid? Do you know? If you aren’t 100% sure that you could teach a new charge nurse how to use one, consider tuning in to this series!
Staffing grids are the OG connection between clinical and financial guidelines. We aren't sure how long they've been around, most likely long before any of us given how beautifully simple and impactful these little pieces of paper can be.
In its most basic form, the staffing grid is a staffing guide.
It tells us how many of each role (nurse, tech, unit secretary, etc.) should provide care based on each census - or number of patients on a given unit. We call it a grid or matrix because it is literally a table that we can trace our finger across the row from the census column to identify how many team members are needed based on the census count.
Staffing grids are critical as we plan for and ensure to staff consistent ratios for caregivers. If loving staffing grids are wrong, we don't wanna be right!
#staffinggrids #nurseratios #patientratios #hospitalstaffing
CONTRACT LABOR
Does your nursing unit's staffing grid align with the budget financially? How do you know?
Remember, the purpose of the staffing grid is two-fold: 1 - to help charge nurses consistently staff to the intended ratios to support clinical guidelines and employee engagement and 2 - to function as a staffing plan that aligns with our financial goals. Given that labor makes up more than half of total hospital expenses, staffing grids are a very important tool to keep us in line with our budgeted goals (which, in publicly funded hospitals, is a commitment to tax payers).
As a part of the arduous annual budget development process, the finance team is tasked with finalizing department productivity targets (the number of worked hours allotted per patient). In high performing organizations, nurse leaders connect with their financial counterparts regularly, including partnership to finalize the nursing budget together.
Team work makes the dream work!
#staffinggrids #staffingsolutions #hospitalfinance #budgetmanagement
STAFF TO YOUR GRID
Are your nursing units staffing in alignment with their grids? How do you know? Where is the grid located on each unit? Has each charge nurse been educated to make flex up/down staffing decisions based on patient volumes? How often are we rounding to audit compliance?
If you are unsure about answers to these questions, we strongly recommend finding them!
The key to achieving desired results in almost all efforts is making a plan and following it. While it may sound overly basic, this is the most commonly overlooked opportunity when it comes to staffing in hospitals.
#staffinggrids #staffingsolutions #nurseratios #hospitalstaffing
CONSISTENT RATIOS
How do you ensure consistent nursing ratios between units? Across multiple hospitals in a health system?
Summarized information from staffing grids can be very valuable when working to understand current state ratios between units, but if grids are in different formats or stored in various locations, finding the answer can prove incredibly difficult.
High performing organizations create, maintain, and annually update a centralized repository of all staffing grids, including their attributes, in a standardized format. This practice establishes a single source of truth and enables the production of valuable reports highlighting inconsistent ratios, skill mix by unit, outliers for orientation or sitter utilization, and even financial reporting that supports the annual budget process.
While this does require work, can you afford to "fly blind"? Consider establishing your own standardized staffing grids - or reach out to us for help at admin@caracookconsulting.com!
#staffinggrid #staffingsolutions #staffingreports #consistentstaffing
FLEXSMART SOLUTIONS STAFFING GRID TOOL
While every organization we've worked with has staffing grids in place, we've found that many clients have opportunities to optimize them. A few key staffing grid challenges we've come across relate to version control, misalignment with budget, and unclear staff ratios.
With these in mind, we've created a staffing grid tool that offers the following advantages:
🗂️ Standardized Format
- Easy to follow staffing grids with specific sections for variable staffing, fixed staffing, education/orientation, and budget information
📥 Centralized Repository
- A single source of truth location to store all grids, addressing version control issues
📊 Ratio Comparison
- Compare planned nurse to patient ratios across like departments within a hospital or across a system
💵 Financial Analysis
- Easily identify if your staffing grids are built to align with your budgeted productivity target and what the associated FTE variance is - or take it a step further and build a zero-based productivity target based on grid inputs
To learn more about FlexSmart Solutions, visit our website at www.flexsmart.com
#staffinggrids #staffingsolutions #hospitalstaffing #hospitalfinance#hospitaloperations