ICONS from ShiftWizard – St. Bernards Medical Center, Jonesboro, AR
The ShiftWizard ICON Database With COVID continuing to spike to record levels across the country, hospital leaders are being forced to make changes to their processes and the systems that support them – with staff scheduling and resource management being some of the most important changes. In order to address the demands and complexities of […]
Strategies to Thrive as a New CNO
First Year CNO? Use These Strategies to Thrive (Not Just Survive!) The first time you’re appointed Chief Nursing Officer, your gut may be churning with many emotions: pride, a sense of accomplishment, excitement, energy, overwhelm and fear. It’s natural to feel a little intimidated about taking on a senior leadership position for the first time, […]
How CNOs can Achieve Scheduling Fairness at the Enterprise Level
The dynamics of staff scheduling change on a moment-to-moment basis in most hospitals. Take this example. Three orthopedic surgeries got canceled one morning for various reasons, which lowered the census on the ortho floor upstairs. Charge nurse Annie realized one of the nurses needed to be sent home early, but which one? Whose turn was […]
The Value of Integrating ShiftWizard with Your EMR
For a CEO, CNO or nurse manager, delivering quality patient care in today’s business environment can feel like it’s less about the “care” and more about the budget. It can be tricky to balance the financials with the goal of delivering superior patient care, but the right tools can make this juggling act more manageable. […]
Can Technology Solve the Nursing Shortage?
If anyone had doubts about how acute the nursing shortage is, a recent Reuters article put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence. Take this example: “Hospitals nationwide face tough choices when it comes to filling nursing jobs. They are paying billions of dollars collectively to recruit and retain nurses rather than risk […]
Boosting Staff Engagement May Improve the Bottom Line
Disengaged staff, including nurses, can be costly to a healthcare organization in several ways: High staff turnover Increased rates of medical errors Reduced productivity The polling company Gallup estimates the “cost of poor management and lost productivity from employees in the U.S. who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged to be between $960 […]
Can Nurse Self-Scheduling Reduce Healthcare Costs?
Nurse self-scheduling is not a new concept. Dating back to the 1960s, self-scheduling largely failed due to the many challenges of implementing an equitable paper-and-pencil system. Today, however, technology makes self-scheduling easy. In fact, the method can be extended beyond the nursing population to other shift-based healthcare workers. And smart organizations that offer self-scheduling as […]
What is the Ideal Nurse-Patient Ratio?
Maintaining the appropriate nurse-patient ratio is more important than ever for nursing leaders across the US. Not having enough nurses to go around can result in poor patient care and nurse burnout. However, having too many nurses can also wreak havoc on the budget. So, what is the appropriate nurse-patient ratio? National & State Level […]
Healthcare IT and the Sunk Cost Fallacy
During a recent conversation with a hospital executive, I was told, “we have made a significant investment in our (product name omitted) system in the past couple of years, and we just couldn’t consider a change to something different.” While seemingly benign, the comment was made in light of the fact that numerous department leaders […]
Using Float Pools to Reduce Nurse Overtime Costs
Often, it can be hard to properly manage staff scheduling. Flexes in patient intake volumes can sometimes make having a set schedule a waste of hospital and facility resources. For example, a healthcare organization may see a flood of patients at mid-day, but this might slow to a trickle overnight. If nurses are on set […]
