Scheduling

The Importance of Automating Healthcare Workforce Scheduling

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January 17, 2023

In today's healthcare environment, workforce planning is crucial to the success of any organization. Poor workforce planning can result in missed patient appointments, long wait times for patients, and negative perceptions of your organization within the community. 

It would help if you had a workforce scheduling solution that integrates easily with your existing workflow and adapts to the healthcare industry's ever-changing needs to avoid these pitfalls.

Healthcare staffing is a complex process requiring the coordination of schedules among multiple providers and facilities. Automating healthcare workforce scheduling can increase productivity while reducing healthcare professionals’ time opportunity cost and increasing patient satisfaction.

What is the Importance of Automating Healthcare Workforce Scheduling?

Optimize Workflow Demand and Supply

A good healthcare workforce scheduling program automates centralized scheduling for the entire hospital. This ensures all front-line schedulers are using the same standards. It also enlarges the view beyond individual departments to help staff requests make sense within the flow of work overall. 

A broader view like this doesn’t work without automation—clearly articulating which nurse or doctor needs to be where and when. An automated scheduling program can rapidly generate and evaluate various scenarios. It can instantly account for shifts canceled at the last minute or nursing coverage added via a short-term agency hire. 

Generating and testing hundreds of schedule permutations in seconds highlights real opportunities to optimize staffing while meeting patient care demands.

Understanding and adopting the automation of workforce scheduling in the healthcare industry will help you learn how to improve the efficiency of your facility. Improve this process, and you improve your business process.

Compliant with the Law and Medical Certifications

Automating physician workforce scheduling is a great way to improve efficiency at a hospital. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an increase of about 2.4 million jobs in healthcare occupations from 2019 to 2029, significantly faster than the average for all occupations. 

Due to this, many hospitals associate with a larger number of physicians in one facility. Not only does this make a hospital more efficient, but it also takes stress off doctors and effectively improves the quality of care. 

In addition, all medical professionals’ hours must be scheduled according to both local and federal labor codes. This means that physicians are not overworked nor underworked, both of which could lead to malpractice or subpar patient care.

Enhanced Cost-effectiveness

Automation in healthcare workforce scheduling software provides a more comprehensive view of workforce requirements and patterns. Through automation, healthcare providers can observe the impact of scheduling options on financial and performance metrics to increase cost-effectiveness.

For instance, a healthcare facility can reduce overtime costs by minimizing scheduling errors and ensuring that the right staff covers shifts. Bed blockages can be identified early and addressed appropriately. And, workers who would prefer to work standby shifts will be accommodated to make their work lives more balanced.

Automate Your Employee Scheduling with FloatCare

Is managing your healthcare staff causing these roadblocks? FloatCare simplifies the process by automating healthcare staff scheduling. FloatCare is a unique scheduling solution that eliminates the time-consuming complexities of healthcare scheduling. 

Our platform will free up managers' time to focus on patient care and eliminate costly overworking of employees. FloatCare frees up employee time and makes scheduling easier for healthcare employers. 

To go above and beyond for our clients, FloatCare's scheduling platform is easy-to-use, reliable, and secure. Built to meet the high standards of the healthcare industry, this cloud-based solution delivers customized benefits that streamline your daily scheduling process as well as inventory management.

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