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Hospitals need to be a well-oiled machine to run smoothly and best serve patient needs. And, one of the most important areas that need to operate (pun intended) without a hitch is the scheduling of hospital staff. Scheduling of hospital staff can be time-consuming, complex, and ever-changing. With time off requests, holidays, multiple network locations, employee burnout, and the ebb and flow of patient volume, scheduling of hospital staff can be a challenging task.
The best way to tackle these issues is to utilize physician scheduling software. Here are 5 inefficiencies you can solve by using scheduling software for hospitals.
1) Lack of automation. Are you using antique methods of scheduling. Are you using white boards, pen and paper, Excel spreadsheets, or even automated software that lacks robust features. If so, you’re scheduling is inefficient and you could gain time and productivity with a more advanced emergency scheduling software option.
2) Errors. Unfortunately, humans by nature are prone to making errors, oftentimes through no fault of their own. Things like missed shifts, cancellation mistakes and more can be damaging to patients. The more ways manually processes can be eliminated, the fewer chances there are for errors.
3) Last-minute shift changes. Let’s face it, hospitals are a fast-paced organization. There are times when more employees are needed to meet demand. And, there are other times, where hospital staff may need time off at the last minute, whether it is to care for a sick child or to care for their own illness.
Often, there aren't enough nurses, physicians, technicians, and other medical providers to adequately fill shifts. Staffing issues in hospitals can cause detrimental outcomes, which includes staff burnout, patient dissatisfaction, and, as mentioned, medication errors and surgical errors.
4) Lack of transparency and accountability. Using hospital schedule software provides a documentation and a trail for schedules. You’ll know from one week to the next and one year to the next, what hospital staff had weekends or holidays off. This allows for a fair distribution of favorable and unfavorable shifts as well as transparency.
5) Overtime. If your hospital is profit based, control costs and protecting profitability is instrumental to making a healthy profit. Controlling overtime costs is one way to help to maintain the hospital budget and a healthy bottom line. Not only can scheduling decisions impact employee burnout, but it can impact profitability.
6) Time off requests inefficiencies. Long gone are the days of placing sticky notes of the scheduling administrators’ desk or emailing them. These antiquated methods can be overlooked resulting in a snowball effect in terms of productivity and patient care. Having an automated method helps eliminate this shift scheduling inefficiency.
Does your hospital staff scheduling suffer from one or more of the above inefficiencies? If so, consider solving them with hospital staff scheduling software and emergency medicine scheduling programs. Review ByteBloc Software features and contact us at 781-890-9100 to learn more.
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