Staff Scheduling at Healthcare Organizations

In the healthcare industry, time is of the essence, but creating reliable and efficient schedules is incredibly challenging, especially in hospitals with a large workforce. Sometimes doctors are expected to plan their shifts themselves. However, from a cost and efficiency stance, it’s better to have doctors spend that time on patient-facing activities. Hiring a schedule planner could solve the problem if the planner takes into account patient and doctor preferences, as well as the estimated time it takes to perform a specific procedure. But without the right tools, this quickly becomes a tedious and frustrating exercise. Has the advent of new analytics solutions helped healthcare organizations progress in this area? 

From Excel to Advanced Analytics

“Excel is still the scheduling application of choice for most healthcare organizations,” says Jan Pieter Gallas, CEO of MedWeb, a Dutch company that develops software solutions for the healthcare sector. “We have seen that it takes a planner on average 10 hours to plan up to 30 different kinds of shifts using Excel. When workforce planning and scheduling is supported by a more advanced modeling tool, the time spent goes down to four hours. That’s a time-saving of 60 percent.”

Gallas and his team built an app that leverages an AIMMS optimization model under the hood to help planners manage the complexity of multiple schedules and evenly spread work hours for all doctors. Called MedSpace, the cloud-based timesheet application comes with a desktop environment and a mobile app. The first step is to gather data. Nurses, doctors and administrative staff can input their holiday schedule and shift preferences in a few clicks. The planner then configures the application to account for different kinds of shifts (day and night, back-up, specialty shifts, etc.), labor regulations, staff preferences, and the availability of operating rooms, clinics and more. Once the configuration is complete, the automatic planner runs with these settings and can create schedules for the coming months up to a year. MedSpace also provides an overview of the capacity requirements for each staff type.

MedSpace supports synchronization on mobile, allowing personnel to add data on the go. This saves doctors and nurses a lot of time and gives them quick insight into their schedule. They can also request shift changes and time off using the app without having to sift through multiple spreadsheets.

As of this writing, MedSpace is used by more than 400 medical institutions in the Netherlands and five of the biggest healthcare organizations in Germany. The company has customers in Belgium and is planning to roll out an English version of the app.

Demand for this type of scheduling solution has grown in recent years. A 2017 Forrester survey indicates that 77 percent of healthcare organizations in the U.S. and China alone identify operational analytics as a key investment priority. The same survey found that analytics initiatives that optimize physician/network/contract performance contribute directly to patient satisfaction. Still, many healthcare providers struggle to implement new analytics initiatives. Culture often hinders adoption. 

Executive Level Buy-In

“Changing people’s mindset is still the toughest challenge,” Gallas says. “Many healthcare institutions still manage their schedules manually in Excel and are not entirely open to automating this process.”

The introduction of a new tool and way of working can make people uneasy. Getting buy-in at the executive level is key, not only to fund the implementation but also to set the right priorities and direction. It’s equally important to train staff and make them aware of the benefits of adopting this type of solution.

“Everyone gets excited when they hear that they will be able to create a schedule within minutes,” Gallas says. “But that’s often not enough.”

Gallas notes that users need an easy-to-use solution that helps them take ownership of the initiative. A good approach is to identify a small team of early adopters and involve them in the process from the start – from vendor selection to implementation, training and roll-out. This will help make the case for transformation.