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ClairVia(TM) Customers Applaud New Open Shift Management Features As Tools to Improve Staff Scheduling and Management Efficiency, and Increase Employee Collaboration and Satisfaction

Posted on: Monday, 13 August 2007, 09:16 CDT

AtStaff's new Open Shift Management features are being praised by the company's ClairVia™ software customers as capabilities that will improve scheduling and management efficiency while increasing employee collaboration and satisfaction.

Open Shift Management incorporates two features -- Shift Opportunities and Shift Swapping -- now available to each healthcare organization employee using his or her personalized, Web-based dashboard in the ClairVia software.

Employees using ClairVia dashboards are now able to sign up for open shifts (Shift Opportunities) and exchange shifts with co-workers (Shift Swapping), in addition to accessing the current month's schedule, gaining the status of time-off and vacation requests, viewing competency expirations, and communicating with managers and co-workers.

While early in their implementation of Open Shift Management, three ClairVia healthcare organization customers -- Crittenton Hospital Medical Center in Rochester Hills, Mich., Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill., and BryanLGH Medical Center in Lincoln, Neb., -- are expressing their strong support of its benefits.

CLAIRVIA'S SHIFT OPPORTUNITIES FEATURE

The Shift Opportunities feature provides managers with an automated means of quickly filling open shifts, and enables employees to earn valuable incentives for signing up to work them.

When employees access their ClairVia dashboard, they can quickly view a current list of open shifts they are qualified to work. The list is updated in real time as employees make selections and new open shifts come available.

Managers have great flexibility to reward those who sign up with actual monetary compensation or award points that can be redeemed for pay, merchandise, and/or schedule preferences.

Depending on manager preference, employees can select one of two options for each offered shift opportunity: Auto-Approved and Consider Me. Auto-Approved opportunities are accepted by the first qualified employee to sign up, Consider Me opportunities allow employees to present themselves for consideration (bid for each shift) and a manager or staffing office representative then selects the employee(s) to work the shift.

Benefits to management

The Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill., recently introduced Shift Opportunities in some of its nursing units (with plans to extend it to all patient care units), and managers there have already noticed significant benefits.

"The most important benefit to me so far has been the time savings," says Lisa Barker, scheduling system coordinator at Carle Foundation Hospital. "The feature literally cuts the time in half that it was taking us to implement our Carle 1st system. It also eliminates the hassles of phone calls from the managers about what is posted or what needs to change with a posting."

Carle 1st is the facility's incentive plan that rewards qualifying employees (those who have worked up to their FTE status) with extra pay if they sign up for open shifts.

"Our old system for posting Carle 1st shifts took several minutes per open shift to post, and that doesn't count the time to run a report to see where the holes were," Barker explains. "Shift Opportunities is so much faster and easier.

"I think it will reduce open shifts more than our old system. We've already had an employee sign up through Shift Opportunities who had never picked up a Carle 1st shift before."

At BryanLGH Medical Center in Lincoln, Neb., staffing coordinators there expect Shift Opportunities will save considerable administrative time and effort.

"As easy and beneficial as I believe Shift Opportunities will be for employees (BryanLGH is currently implementing the feature to 130 employees, with plans to roll it out to more than 1,000 staff members), I feel its greatest benefit will be for our nurse managers and staffing office," emphasizes Deb Lohmeier, staffing assistant at BryanLGH. "Handling sign-ups for extra shifts is the last paper-based manual process of this type here, and we won't have to do it anymore. Nurse managers will no longer have to review the paper sign-up sheet, and call the staffing office to inform them who signed up. And the staffing office won't have to manually enter the shift information into the ClairVia system."

Adding to the efficiency, Lohmeier says, is that BryanLGH will be using the Auto-Approved function in Shift Opportunities, which requires no manager intervention.

Benefits to employees

"Simply by providing such ease of use, Shift Opportunities is an asset for employees," says Barker, referring to the automation that eliminates manual steps and phone calls. "Employees have had the ability to pick up extra shifts and increase their income, but this feature just makes it very easy to participate."

Latoria Jake, a scheduling assistant at Carle Foundation, says employees will appreciate the convenient, online access and fact that the lists are updated in real time.

"This is a great asset to our staff because they'll not only be able to review open shifts at home, but they'll be able to view how all selections affect their schedules and fit together," says Jake. "It's also great to get instant confirmation of their selection, rather than having to wait for an answer or for their request to be handled manually."

At BryanLGH, employees are getting excited about the expanded rollout of Shift Opportunities.

"The main question I'm getting among our staff is 'When can we all start using it?,'" Lohmeier says.

She adds that the support and assistance from AtStaff has been instrumental in utilizing Shift Opportunities and other ClairVia software functionality.

"We get great support from AtStaff. If there's something we need, we just contact AtStaff and they work at getting us what we need, either through our existing software, or getting it planned for the next enhancement."

CLAIRVIA'S SHIFT-SWAPPING FEATURE

"Shift Swapping in ClairVia has the potential to reduce open shifts, keep schedules more accurate and up to date, eliminate extra steps by managers in handling schedule changes, and improve employee satisfaction," says Angela DelPup, a scheduling and staffing administrator at Crittenton Hospital Medical Center, a 290-bed facility located in Rochester Hills, Mich.

Crittenton is in the midst of an initial implementation of ClairVia's Shift-Swap feature in its nursing units. The feature allows employees to trade shifts of equal duration in the same pay period, with all shift exchanges automatically integrated in real time within the schedule.

The feature works like this:

To initiate a swap, an employee invites his or her peers to consider a shift trade.

The swap "initiator" is presented with a view of all employees meeting the swap requirements.

Peers receive the swap invitation, along with a view of what their schedules will look like if they accepted the swap, on their employee dashboards via the Web.

If an employee accepts a swap, the change is automatically made to the schedule. (The feature can be set up to require manager approval before swaps are finalized.)

As an option, a swap notification message may be sent automatically to department managers and staffing personnel.

"The expectation is that employees in our nursing units will be able to swap shifts without manager approval, as this is especially helpful with even trades (shifts of equal duration in the same pay period)," DelPup says. "As we progress, the Shift-Swap feature will be offered to the other units in the hospital for any manager that would like to use it."

Benefits to management

At Crittenton Hospital, employees actively swap shifts, which lead to lots of schedule changes. Routinely, requests by employees to swap shifts are processed manually by managers, and requests are often received too late to be reflected in posted staffing sheets.

"ClairVia Shift-Swap will improve scheduling accuracy and efficiency for managers because employee shift trades will be processed online and will automatically update," DelPup explains. "At the same time, managers will no longer have to handle manual swap requests and messages, and spend the extra time making the schedule changes. This will be a major time-saver."

Benefits to employees

Employees, she says, will benefit from ClairVia Shift-Swap by gaining greater control over their schedules, receiving immediate feedback on their schedule requests, and using an easy, convenient way to interact with colleagues.

"I believe Shift Swap is another step forward in empowering employees, and creating a more positive, satisfying work environment," DelPup states. "They'll receive immediate responses from their co-workers, and changes become finalized quickly without the delays that can cause uncertainty and stress.

"The feature also saves employees from having to personally call or talk to several colleagues about a specific shift they want to trade. Right over the Web, they'll know who is available to swap, can contact those people immediately, and finalize the schedule change without manager involvement."

Because of its overt benefits to employees and user-friendly design, Crittenton predicts that Shift-Swap will likely increase employees' day-to-day reliance on the ClairVia software.

"We expect this feature will encourage our staff to use the system even more frequently, which is great. Our goal is to have all employees actively rely on this software, and use it to its fullest potential!"

About Crittenton Hospital

Crittenton Hospital Medical Center is a 290-bed facility located in Rochester/Rochester Hills, Mich. A not-for-profit community hospital that opened in 1967, Crittenton is one of Rochester Hills largest employers, with a staff of more than 1,600 and more than 500 physicians.

Crittenton offers a wide range of emergency and ambulatory services and specialized programs, including intensive care, occupational medicine, pediatric urgent care, emergency services, cardiac care, audiology, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, sports medicine, radiation oncology, imaging and diagnostics, sleep and neurophysiology medicine, joint replacement, executive and travel medicine, wound management, bloodless medicine, hospice, endoscopy, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation and inpatient psychiatric services.

About Carle Foundation Hospital

Carle Foundation Hospital, a 305-bed, not-for-profit regional hospital in Urbana, Ill., is the region's only Level I Trauma Center.

The primary teaching hospital for the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana Champaign, Carle Foundation is accredited by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and offers the area's only independent Level III Perinatal Service.

The facility also includes: the Carle Heart Center, Carle Cancer Center, Family Centered Care Birthing Center, Emergency Department, and 25 other departments including surgical, cardiovascular and neonatal ICUs.

About BryanLGH Medical Center

BryanLGH Medical Center, a 606-bed, not-for-profit, locally owned medical center in Lincoln, Neb., includes two acute-care and several outpatient facilities employing 4,000 dedicated employees.

This nationally and regionally recognized medical center is a premier provider of cardiovascular and neuroscience services, trauma and emergency medicine, oncology, orthopedics, radiology, general surgery and women's health.

BryanLGH is home to the largest College of Health Sciences in Nebraska. Programs include a BSN, MS in nurse anesthesia, and associate degrees in adult cardiac sonography, invasive cardiovascular technology and vascular and general sonography.

About AtStaff and ClairVia™*

AtStaff develops demand management and staff management software that enables healthcare organizations to improve healthcare quality and patient safety, increase profitability, and enhance staff recruitment and retention. Hospital enterprise solutions and physician scheduling systems from AtStaff serve more than 1,200 healthcare organizations, medical facilities, nursing departments and group practices.

AtStaff's newest software is ClairVia Demand Manager™, an outcomes-driven, demand management solution. Its science-based, patient tracking technology enables healthcare organizations to monitor and measure patient demand and maintain the correct mix of clinical staffing for patient demand requirements.

ClairVia Demand Manager has the most advanced predictive capabilities on the market, using event-driven Patient Progress Patterns to predict clinical workload demands and constantly refine the accuracy of those projections. Hospitals using ClairVia are able to build a reputation for superior patient safety, better patient experience and clinician satisfaction, while optimizing both their clinical and financial outcomes.

More information is available at www.clairvia.com.

* Patent Pending

Source: Business Wire

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