Thanks to TMCNet Healthcare Technology for including us with news about Beaumont Hospital and how it solves online scheduling for 1,500 individuals with Shiftboard. If you are researching the healthcare technology world, TMCNet is a great first stop. (more…)
Archive for September, 2009
Beaumont Hospital scheduling case study by TMCNet.com
Thursday, September 24th, 2009Shiftboard Goes Back to School
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
It is September and I don’t need my calendar to tell me that. I know it is September because of all the frantic calls I’ve been receiving from schools, PTA (parent teacher association) members and booster clubs. School is in full swing and for involved parents this means schedules are completely packed. Parents who volunteer at school functions don’t generally have time to worry about details. They want to help and be involved, but the process must be very easy and stress free. Shiftboard also understands volunteer scheduling needs to be affordable.
Different volunteer programs call for robust scheduling tools (more…)
Adopting Online Nurse Scheduling and Staffing Systems
Monday, September 21st, 2009When the internet pioneers named the world wide web, they certainly had to know it was a spider’s web with a million, billion, trillion strands. There is so much information out there, on every conceivable niche, that it can be a huge challenge to find what you are looking for. We’ve been researching adoption and growth in the use of Software-as-a-Service tools and applications for hospitals, healthcare facilities, nursing departments, and so forth to see how the market is changing and adapting to web-based software. We hope to gather info that helps our customers make the case for why these tools are necessary for today’s nurse leaders.
Nurse Scheduling is Going Online
A few years ago, Lauren Sabet, from the First Consulting Group did some analysis. She found that,
“As hospitals and health care professionals struggle with a chronic shortage of nurses, Internet-based software packages are being developed that can make the staffing and scheduling process more efficient.“
They did their analysis showing, what many saw as brutally obvious but not yet clear on how to execute, that technology can help address challenges related to nurse staffing and scheduling. I’ll add in here that it definitely does help. At the time, they wrote six case studies profiling a variety of integrated software products, ranging in price from $60,000 to $150,000 for a 300-bed hospital, offer a range of benefits. Today, those costs have dropped for those using web-based online scheduling software.
• Optimizing staff resources and minimizing use of agencies (Shiftboard note: We have seen a lot of data and growth around the use of outside staffing firms);
• Boosting staff satisfaction and retention (Shiftboard note: We see this daily);
• Streamlining traditional management processes;
• Expanding personal accessibility, flexibility, and choices through staff bidding and self-scheduling; (Shiftboard note: we have not seen the bidding systems operating successfully, however, they could still be out there.)
• Improving control of staffing costs and potential cost savings; and
• Simplifying management of regulatory requirements.
Nurse Managers and Nurses Lead the Way
Today, more health care organizations are taking advantage of online scheduling and staffing programs. The research findings from Sabet indicated that once nurses started using online tools, other departments began to demand them. So, in large measure, nurses drive adoption in the world of healthcare technology.
We couldn’t find updates to the analysis, but in our next post, we are going to explore some of the findings of the new FCG parent company, CSC. They created a report about healthcare costs and regulations, which includes healthcare staffing and retention, in 2009 and looking forward over the next 5+ years.
–TJ M
Nonprofits Get Social Media: Seth Godin is Wrong
Friday, September 18th, 2009I like BNET.com for their business articles and the range of deeper issues they cover surrounding biz and tech.
Stefan Deering writes at the BNET Intercom blog about a comment made by Seth Godin, famous marketing guru (who I also follow and enjoy). But Godin made some comment about how nonprofits are blowing it and don’t get social media. Godin couldn’t be more wrong.
We have a fair number of nonprofits, event management types, who are all over the Twitter-sphere and Blogosphere and Facebook-sphere (okay, that last one is a goofy stretch word-wise). Point is, they do get it. They are leveraging the tools as well or better than some of the, scratch that, than many of the corporate and media types I know.
I’m voting with Stefan. Seth Godin Is Wrong about Nonprofits and the Web
-TJ M
Flexible Work: Bulldoze Your Cubicles
Friday, September 18th, 2009There are many who will cheer at the title of this post.
Workforce management will never be the same.
The cubicle has been the bane of jokes and banter for many years. Now, some astute researchers have proven they actually reduce productivity.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett is a blogger for the Harvard Business Review’s HBR Voices and her blog is called Winning the Talent War. I’ll share this short quote: “‘cube farms’ discourage collaboration, stifle employee engagement and, as a result, strangle innovation at the exact time when it’s desperately needed. As Dilbert fans might say, ‘Duh.’” The full post is titled: Bulldoze Your Cubicles for Better Collaboration
Side note: On a project not long ago, I read about Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy where she directs the “Hidden Brain Drain”—a task force committed to fully realizing female and multicultural talent. Hat tip to The Future of Work blog for the actual link to the Harvard Business Review article.
-TJ M
Links in this post:
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hewlett/2009/08/bulldoze_your_cubicles_for_bet.html
http://thefutureofwork.net/blog/
http://www.shiftboard.com/blog
Nurse Manager and Leadership Books
Thursday, September 17th, 2009Nursing and nurse scheduling is an industry we serve. From hospitals to clinics to nurse staffing firms, we talk to a fair number of nurse managers. Every profession that comes to us has a scheduling challenge they need to solve. We solve scheduling in a way that makes a nurse manager’s life easier and existing customers refer us to their colleagues.
Part of how I started this search is from reading a post on the “Nurse Scheduling Problem” at Wikipedia. I was surprised to find a specific entry (and we didn’t start it) on this focused topic. Since I don’t head to the gym very often these days like Rob does (see Rob’s post on why SaaS is better than a hat backwards), I had time on my hands one night after work.
But I often wonder, particularly with nurses, how they manage it all. My mom was a nurse and a manager and I often listened to the tales of how they managed to staff all the shifts, scrambling to fill a shift just in time nearly every day. Now when I go to the doctor’s office, and I have to wait, I think who is scheduling the doctors and nurses? I decided to do some research and see if anyone had written a book (or two) on how to be a good nurse manager or nurse supervisor. What sorts of resources would I find?
Nurse Scheduling for Managers
That was the title I hoped to find so we could buy ten copies and share them with customers. I didn’t find that title, nor do I think we’re going to write it any time soon, but I did find a few five-star rated books (and a few that just had good titles) that I thought I’d share.
1. Nurse Manager’s Survival Guide: Practical Answers to Everyday Problems
by Tina Marrelli. This one was out of stock, but it seemed to be one that was high on the buy list.
2. A Charge Nurse’s Guide: Navigating the Path of Leadership (Paperback)
This one had two five-star reviews. Book by Scott Allen.
3. Effective Leadership and Management in Nursing (6th Edition)
This textbook had nine reviews and if you had to keep one on your bookshelf, this was it. By Eleanor Sullivan.
Nurse Manager Books on Amazon
If you search Nurse Manager, you won’t find loads of titles, but you will find 15 or so useful nurse staffing, nurse manager, nurse leadership books. If you have some favorites, or know of some good resources that we should review and list, please share them with us by email. We are also combing the web to find good nurse discussion groups and social networks specifically for the professional nurse.
-TJ M
Online Nurse Scheduling: Customer Success Story
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009Read on for the full case study. (more…)
