SAN DIEGO – Three Florida not-for-profit hospitals are reportedly saving more than $1 million by using Concerro’s automated nurse staffing solution to fill open shifts.
The shift from paper-based staffing solutions to a Web-based service is one of the more popular trends pacing hospitals and healthcare providers these days. The technology allows hospitals to match open positions with qualified nurses, gives nurses an opportunity to manage their own schedules and reduces the need for costly contract agency personnel or extra incentives to fill slots.
The system has proven successful at Health First’s three Florida not-for-profit hospitals – Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach, Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne and Palm Bay Community Hospital in Palm Bay – which employ roughly 1,700 registered nurses. Officials say the system saw an 83 percent reduction in contract labor use in the first six months and expects to realize a $3.12 million annual reduction in contract labor, representing an annual net savings of $1.32 million.
“We used to spend just a huge amount of time making phone calls each day … and begging people to come in,” said Jan McCoy, vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer at Cape Canaveral Hospital, of the hospital’s scheduling woes prior to the Concerro implementation last June. In some situations, she said, hospital officials had to offer double or triple bonuses to nurses to get them to fill needed shifts.
With Concerro’s Web-based system, hospital staff can access their schedules at any time and request open shifts for which they’re qualified – including shifts in other departments of the hospital. The open process allows nurses to plan their own schedules and hospital officials to fill shifts faster.
According to McCoy, there’s been a 32 percent reduction in the use of incentives to fill shifts. Other benefits include the elimination of costly outside agencies and traveling nurses, improved communication between nurses and administration and an improvement in staffing management and the posting of open shifts.
Graham Barnes, president and CEO of Concerro – formerly named BidShift – said 170 hospitals in the United States now use the company’s automated staffing services, including ShiftConnect and StaffReach. The service isn’t marketed as an IT–sponsored initiative, he said, but rather as a service that improves interaction between staff and managers and makes scheduling easier and more cost-effective.
“Concerro promotes a shared responsibility for effective staffing that recognizes the commitment of existing employees and helps recruit and retain the workforce in today’s highly competitive labor market,” Barnes said in a recent press release. “Health First joins a growing group of health systems that are using Concerro to create the nursing environment and competitive edge that many organizations are striving for.”
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