Quick View
Deaconess has a long history of providing efficient care, but as they scaled their business they found their internal staff management systems lacking. Siloed systems prevented nearby locations from sharing staff efficiently leading to increased overtime and agency nurse costs.
Deaconess upgraded to ShiftWizard as their enterprise-wide system in early 2015. The system streamlined their staffing operations saving hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each year.
“ShiftWizard lets us look at every employee, across all units at all hospitals. That allows us to identify and address gaps and overages to ensure the best possible care for each patient.” – Kathy Clodfelter, Director of Patient Care Services
Hospital at a Glance
Deaconess Health System
- 6 hospital system
- 20+ care sites
- Established in 1892
- Southern Indiana region
Making the Shift
Deaconess has worked hard over the last several years to improve productivity management and knew that they were already way ahead of the industry in that area. But, with several departments operating as silos using stand-alone staffing management solutions, they knew that additional staffing improvements could still be made. With that in mind, finding an enterprise-wide system that could be shared across multiple departments and locations made sense.
When they learned about ShiftWizard, they didn’t expect to see huge cost savings with productivity since they were already managing that so aggressively but knew there were other ways to realize additional cost savings with overall labor management and specifically with staff scheduling. Deaconess started using ShiftWizard in early 2015, with support from an operations committee including representatives from finance, IT, ancillary services, and more.
They started with nursing, but quickly extended the solution to a number of ancillary departments including Pharmacy, Dietary, and others across the three Deaconess hospitals.
Reducing Overtime & Savings
Kathy Clodfelter is the Director of Patient Care Services at Deaconess Gateway Hospital. She and her team oversee staffing across 10 nursing units at Deaconess Gateway Hospital and 10 other nursing units at the main hospital campus, as well as the resource team across those units. Prior to ShiftWizard, they relied on Excel spreadsheets to manage staff scheduling and resource management across all of those units.
According to Kathy, “the immediate appeal was with the transparency that ShiftWizard offered, and our ability to use that to track over me. ShiftWizard lets us look at every employee, across all units at all hospitals. That allows us to identify and address gaps and overages to ensure the best possible care for each patient.”
Unlike many hospitals, Deaconess manages staffing in four-hour shifts instead of the traditional eight-hour shifts. Fortunately, ShiftWizard was flexible enough to accommodate that need. The solution has also helped the hospital standardize shift start and stop times across all departments.
Improving Communication
“The entire staffing and resource team now has the ability to identify deficits, to better understand where we are staffed well, where we are not, etc. This has really helped make everyone much more in tune to helping one another.”- Kathy Clodfelter, Director of Patient Care Services
Eliminating Errors
“There is nothing more frustrating than if you need eight people per shift, but have 15 people sign up on one day and only three the next day. With ShiftWizard, we can establish PAR levels, ensuring that employees only sign up for available shifts, and making it easier on everyone involved,”- Kathy Clodfelter, Director of Patient Care Services
Benefits Beyond Nursing
“I would say the primary benefit has been time-savings, realized through ShiftWizard’s self-scheduling and template-based scheduling capabilities. I estimate that ShiftWizard allows us to do in just 12 hours, what would have taken at least 24 using our previous solution, and at least a week using a paper-based system.”- Meredith Petty, Pharmacist
Putting Patients First
“Time savings, cost savings, and communication are great, but the primary goal of Deaconess is always to deliver the best patient care possible. ShiftWizard has helped us achieve that goal by ensuring that we have the right staff at all times to meet the needs of each and every patient.”- Kathy Clodfelter, Director of Patient Care Services
