New Scheduling Challenges & ShiftWizard
Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, more and more hospitals have had to scramble to address the operational challenges of staff scheduling during severe capacity surges. The upcoming winter and post-holiday COVID-19 patient influxes are expected to continue at a devastating pace. Efficiently and accurately reallocating and repurposing staff has become vital in supporting these ever-changing scheduling needs and and sudden, extreme workload variances.
To meet the sudden and growing demands of care for COVID patients, some hospitals have had to repurpose staff originally assigned to surgical or ambulatory areas but who had been displaced due to the cancelation of elective surgeries and procedures. However, what seems a simple idea is difficult to achieve if you’re not using a flexible scheduling software.
Flexible Scheduling at Elliot Health System
Managers using ShiftWizard, however, can readily update permissions and department assignments in bulk to manage drastic and last-minute adjustments to groups of staff. This typically tedious and sometimes manual task is easily transformed into a few clicks. Hospitals like Elliot Health System in Manchester, NH, used ShiftWizard to quickly build new surge departments, complete with unique positions, shifts, and permissions.
Using the ShiftWizard Configuration Dashboard, managers were able to assign qualified and displaced staff to these new departments, which was then used for daily deployments based on patient demand. With newly-created and updated permissions, staff were deployed each day to fill staffing needs across the hospital.
Carol Barrett, Director of Nursing Finance at Elliot Health System in Manchester, NH, used ShiftWizard to set up additional patient care areas:
“In response to the COVID surge in March, our Hospital set up additional “patient care” areas. ShiftWizard assisted us in getting these areas quickly established and assigning hundreds of staff the necessary system permissions. This allowed us to build shifts and have staff “self-schedule” around their existing shifts. This eliminated numerous phone calls and increased our ability to more quickly respond to the ever changing situation.”
As hospitals continue to face these new challenges and are forced to make increasingly quick decisions and improvise like never before, ShiftWizard software offers doable solutions that can help address these unprecedented staffing challenges.
For more information on how you can use ShiftWizard’s flexible scheduling features at your hospital, please email us at hello@shiftwizard.com.
