Research Triangle Park (RTP), NC, July 17, 2017 – ShiftWizard™, a provider of workforce management software for the healthcare industry, announced today details of their momentum and growth through 2018. The year has been a turning point for ShiftWizard regarding market penetration and brand recognition. A growing team and a rapidly expanding pipeline are headlined by new strategic partnerships including FirstHealth of the Carolinas and Elliot Health System.
ShiftWizard’s increased business activity has been spurred by a shift in healthcare industry preferences towards best-in-breed solutions over comprehensive systems that attempt to do it all. It is not uncommon for healthcare organizations to have hundreds, even thousands of vendors. As a result, there was a movement over the past decade to consolidate vendors whenever possible. Years later, organizations are stuck with neglected software packages that have been abandoned for manual work arounds. Nurse staff scheduling is one of the biggest examples of this practice.
“Nursing satisfaction is key to retention,” says Karen Robeano, R.N., DNP, chief nursing officer for FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. “One major area that we have lagged behind in our nursing satisfaction scores is scheduling. After learning what the ShiftWizard program was, we felt that ShiftWizard could provide a more automated approach in giving our nurses more satisfaction by allowing them to have more input and control over their schedules.”
ShiftWizard helped FirstHealth, and Karen, alleviate the unnecessary administrative work that was otherwise required to manage their complex shift scheduling scenarios. “ShiftWizard provides access to real-time productivity data so that I can make cost-efficient staffing decisions and produce system-wide reports for executive review. The self-scheduling system is also a staff pleaser—scheduling is a sensitive matter, but ShiftWizard makes the process as fair and simple as possible for our nurses, staff and managers.”
Considering the potential benefits, ShiftWizard may seem like an easy decision for healthcare administrators, but this is not the case as new clients often come to ShiftWizard with metaphorical “scar tissue” from old software implementations gone wrong. These unsuccessful implementation stories typically originate from corporate investments into wide-ranging and expensive systems that were not well received at the staff level. Despite low adoptions rates and internal turmoil, such systems were often in place for years as the perceived switching costs outweighed the benefits of other options in the minds of executives.
As technology has progressed, the business case for transitioning to best-in-breed systems has become much easier for leaders to establish. “Software has become more user friendly, integrations and implementations are now easier and faster, and the path to ROI is easier to track and justify. In fact, once ShiftWizard’s value proposition crosses executives’ desks, it becomes harder to justify the status-quo than the new software investment,” adds Shane Parker, Co-Founder & Chief Nursing Officer of ShiftWizard.
Joe Velk, CEO of ShiftWizard, notes that “ShiftWizard believes that its electronic self-scheduling system generates $2-3 in savings to our clients for every dollar spent on software licensing costs. These savings are realized through enhancements to operational efficiency, such as reducing reliance on premium labor, while increasing staff retention by 7% or more. Many leaders are unaware of these potential savings that can equate to millions of dollars per year that directly hit their bottom line.”
As the healthcare industry continues its pursuit of providing excellent patient care, more are expected to transition to best-in-breed software that provides the best-fit solutions to their problems and enables individuals and organizations to focus more fully on patient outcomes.
About ShiftWizard
ShiftWizard makes healthcare staff scheduling & communication easy, so leaders can focus on what really matters–improving patient outcomes.
ShiftWizard’s workforce management software was designed by nurses specifically for healthcare organizations. ShiftWizard offers integrations with all major EMR and Time & Attendance systems to enable cost-effective decision making based on real-time Worked Hours per Unit of Service measures such as HPPD and HPPV.
ShiftWizard’s clients range from nation-wide enterprise health systems to regional skilled nursing facilities.
For more information, visit www.shiftwizard.com.
