Updated September 30, 2024
What are digital staffing and scheduling solutions?
AVIA Marketplace defines dynamic staffing and scheduling as the ability to leverage a marketplace supply workforce (including full-time, part-time, per diem, contracted, gig, and alumni labor) with adaptive and staff-centric digital scheduling and staffing tools. Dynamic scheduling and staffing capabilities allow organizations to accurately predict and fill staffing needs through real demand forecast accuracy, which results in greater labor efficiency, reduced costs, and improved employee satisfaction.
Staffing and scheduling framework
Clinical staffing services — Services that assist health systems with clinical staff augmentation
Predictive staffing and scheduling automation — Analytically-driven tools that help optimize staffing levels and staff schedules
Time keeping — Systems and tools designed to accurately track and manage employee work hours, ensuring efficient labor management and compliance with labor regulations
With an agile workforce mindset, dynamic scheduling, and staffing tools redistribute the administrative burden away from management, unlock the workforce as a system resource asset (rather than a group of departments), and create measurable value for the health system as a whole to manage labor spend. Organizations are better equipped to staff from within their controlled resource base, minimize their overtime use and reduce their reliance on premium labor spend, including outside agencies to cover unfilled shifts.
The case for staffing and scheduling solutions
Healthcare systems are grappling with significant staffing challenges, necessitating a shift from traditional scheduling models to more agile, data-driven approaches. Conventional paper-based scheduling in healthcare is labor-intensive and primarily management-driven, providing a static, isolated view of staffing needs typically focused at the unit or department level. This approach lacks visibility across the facility or enterprise, often resulting in inaccuracies, and treats the workforce as department-based assets, leading to increased reliance on costly third-party staffing.
The gravity of this situation is underscored by projections indicating a potential shortage of up to 3.2 million healthcare workers by 2026, with 66% of health systems reporting an inability to operate at full capacity at some point in the past year due to staffing shortages.1 To address these challenges, hospitals are increasingly adopting Internal Resource Pools (IRPs), also known as float pools, which provide flexibility to adjust staffing based on census demands, minimize reliance on agency resources, and improve healthcare labor cost savings.2 However, to fully leverage these solutions, health systems would greatly benefit from digital tools that: facilitate management of IRPs; enable dynamic, enterprise-wide staffing optimization; provide real-time visibility into staffing needs and available resources; and support data-driven decision-making for workforce allocation.
In an agile workforce environment, dynamic scheduling and staffing tools redistribute the administrative burden across the workforce, unlock the workforce as a system resource asset (rather than a group of departmental assets), and create measurable value for the health system as a whole. Organizations are better equipped to staff from within their controlled resource base, minimize their overtime spend, and reduce their reliance on outside agencies to cover unfilled shifts.
| The business case for action | Measurable results3 |
|---|---|
| Direct financial impact With an agile workforce, health systems can decrease their reliance on agency staff and reduce the number of overtime hours. | • 75% of open shift hours filled more than two weeks ahead of the shift • 50-75% reduction in open shift and bonus shift incentives |
| Productivity impact Dynamic scheduling and staffing solutions automate previously manual processes and deliver significant time savings. | • Schedule creation: 13.4 hours to 6.6 hours • Post-scheduling tasks: 40.4 hours to 4.4 hours • Post-schedule timecard: 25.4 hours to 7 hours |
| Indirect impact Employee-driven staffing and feedback-rich solutions improve overall staff satisfaction. | • RN staffing satisfaction increased from the 18th to 81st percentile • 65% decrease in last-minute work requests • 63% decrease in core staff floating |
Key attributes of staffing and scheduling solutions
What health systems should consider as they assess their needs and investigate digital documentation solutions:
Demand prediction — Leading solutions utilize current and historical data to predict patient demand and generate appropriate staffing configurations.
Flexible schedule generation — Solutions should automatically create schedules to match predicted demand, include tools for managers to assist with schedule creation and generation, and create multiple schedule types based on “what if” scenarios.
Staff self-service — Scheduling interfaces should be available across a variety of access points (including web or mobile) and allow staff to request additional shifts, swap shifts, request time off, and self-schedule where appropriate. For targeted roles across multiple sites, solutions should generate candidate criteria.
Expanded staffing and supply options — Flexible staffing models should provide employees with the option to flex locations, shifts, and between bedside and virtual. Leading solutions also offer the ability to build network pools (such as ambulatory or geographic) to utilize as the primary backup for unfilled shifts, along with additional short-shift pools to capture part-time resources.
Productivity tracking and analytics — Tracking capabilities should include key metrics related to productivity, labor cost, satisfaction, and patient outcomes.
Organizing for dynamic staffing and scheduling success
Visit AVIA Marketplace ahead of your next purchasing decision for unbiased third-party information, ratings, and reviews for hundreds of the leading digital health companies and solutions.
- https://www.aha.org/fact-sheets/2021-05-26-fact-sheet-strengthening-health-care-workforce;
https://www.chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/hospitals-continue-to-wrestle-with-staffing-shortages - https://blog.hallmarkhcs.com/reducing-costs-and-increasing-efficiency-with-an-internal-resource-pool
- Avantas Client Stories, The University of Kansas
- https://healthcare.cioapplications.com/cxoinsights/how-predictive-analytics-is-reshaping-the-approach-to-healthcare-staffing-nid-992.html
- https://healthcare.cioapplications.com/cxoinsights/how-predictive-analytics-is-reshaping-the-approach-to-healthcare-staffing-nid-992.html
