Like all other industries, the role of healthcare in daily life cannot be understated. Its success depends on streamlined functioning and smooth workflows. Besides, hospitals must manage the activities of not only doctors and nurses but also of patients and administrative staff.
And of course, larger hospitals come with greater responsibility, and vice versa. So, handling all these human resources without a proper system is quite hard. Using pens and paper has also become obsolete. Therefore, to keep the processes fluent, there must be a solution that meets all the requirements of running a hospital.
A healthcare workforce management system helps administrators streamline all the operations related to HR, like staff scheduling, leaves, attendance, reporting, payroll, and much more.
This blog covers the importance of workforce management software for hospitals.
What is Workforce Management Software?
A WFM software is a digital platform that allows administrators to control and manage their staff from a single dashboard in real-time. With its advanced features, this solution is becoming more popular with every passing moment.
For the healthcare industry, WFM software encompasses providing the best services to patients. As is the case with the healthcare sector, it is quite different. The staff do not have the luxury of a 9-5 job. Medical emergencies may happen anytime.
For this, everyone and everything must be prepared beforehand to avoid any mishaps. Also, if we talk about a surgeon who has performed a crucial surgery at midnight, might not be able to get back to work at 9 am.
So, tackling such circumstances and many others like these, conventional methods do not work anymore. That’s why hospitals now use automated systems for all their operations and processes.
This automated software offers features to monitor employee shifts, time and attendance, cases worked on, clinical outcomes of those cases, patient reviews, performance, among others.
Here is a short list which gives a better idea what a healthcare workforce management system can do:
- Hospital Staff Scheduling
- Periodic Appraisals
- Monitoring Staff Activities and Workflows
- Payroll
- Medical Coding
- Billing
- Medical Claims
- Radiology Information System
Importance of Healthcare Workforce Management System
As hospitals are a center to give health-related services to patients, there must be a good system in place to manage everything. By doing so, there exists treatment effectiveness, especially in emergencies.
Furthermore, multiple departments require more resources, specialists, and nurses working in cohesion to save lives. Thus, using healthcare staff optimization software enables administrators to streamline HR operations.
Let’s explore the importance of using this type of software at hospitals:
1. Tracking Employee Time
If we talk about hospitals, the duty of one staff is interconnected with that of the other. For example, a doctor operating in the OT will need a group of people to assist him. These may include nurses, anesthesiologists, radiologists, and probably a pathologist for the blood work.
So, a medical staff scheduling system enables administrators to track the shifts even across departments with just a few clicks. This helps make informed decisions and track shifts accordingly. Also, the time-in and time-out record of all employees is available anytime to managing jobs more conveniently.
Healthcare staff are more inclined toward burnout and exhaustion due to multiple shifts, long working hours, loss of patients, and inappropriate behavior of some attendants. Therefore, it is very beneficial for the medical staff to have some days off to recharge mentally and physically. Hence, the time offs are handled thoroughly with automation.
2. Staffing
In the healthcare sector, especially in hospitals, nothing is predictable. You can never tell when you would need double staff or at what times there would be no patient at the hospital for which you would have to do understaffing for the moment. Emergencies like explosions, earthquakes, floods, or a pandemic may result in a sudden rise in patients.
Whereas there is a normal schedule of shifts of staff duties during normal circumstances which can be easily managed through WFM software. Hence, no understaffing or overstaffing takes place.
Additionally, overstaffing adversely affects hospital’s revenues while understaffing may be dangerous for patient’s care; also resulting in work overload on existing staff.
Thus, a hospital scheduling system uses a comprehensive interface. This enables senior management to deploy their human resources better. So, there are enough staff to handle increased workloads, but not so much as to cause overstaffing.
3. Efficient Payroll Management
Since hospitals don’t have set hours, many employees would need to work several or longer shifts to handle crises. In addition, a sudden spike in demand may force some to work extra.
Calculating the relevant wages manually using pen and paper is not only time-consuming and laborious, but it can also be error-prone, particularly in large hospitals.
However, improvements in automation have made it possible for healthcare staffing scheduling software to determine each employee’s precise pay by accounting for overtime, sick days, and flexible work schedules.
Not only is this error-free and quicker, but it also saves the hospital money by preventing the need to hire more personnel for accounting.
4. Regulatory Compliance
Most individuals are aware of the necessity of HIPAA Compliant Solutions (Health Insurance Portability and Affordability Act) when it comes to healthcare.
However, rules are there in the healthcare industry and other sectors to guarantee workers’ well-being. This covers everything, like minimum earnings, overtime compensation, maternity leaves, and sufficient leaves.
As previously noted, hospitals can more easily track and monitor the payroll and staffing aspects of their operations with the help of healthcare workforce management software. The solution can be used to compile all the reports regarding working conditions for employees, which will aid in demonstrating compliance.
Additionally, it is possible to create a customized platform for healthcare staff management to guarantee compliance with staff scheduling.
5. Reduction in Overhead
Hospital human resource management is challenging since workdays aren’t usually 9 to 5, and unexpected events might make workdays last longer than planned.
Besides, there are several situations when workers must put in more hours; therefore, while calculating leaves and overtime, human resource managers must consider all those situations. In this case, workflow management software can aid in streamlining procedures.
Moreover, hospital activities managed by pen and paper are not only slow and prone to mistakes, but they also incur financial overhead. In the absence of a digital platform, hospitals would have to increase staffing levels.
Nevertheless, medical personnel management software eliminates the need for it and speeds up the procedure.
6. Integration
Hospital personnel management is essential because hospitals are like other workplaces, e.g., software companies or factories. Routine hospital operations involve various tasks, including medical coding, billing, claims processing, insurance analytics, and general financial management. One such task is managing human resources.
Thus, senior administrators can better track human resource activities by using a platform for health workforce management that can link with other medical technologies, such electronic health records.
Furthermore, this software can assist small and medium-sized clinics in addition to large hospitals by integrating healthcare with tailored practice management solutions.
Final Thoughts
The healthcare sector is dealing with both a severe scarcity of competent workers and a dramatic spike in expenditure. According to a survey, labor costs make up almost 60% of medical organizations’ total operating costs, and they cannot continue to rise at the current rate. In other words, effective staffing has emerged as a critical focus area for the healthcare sector.
It wouldn’t be a leap to suggest that one of the top issues facing healthcare CEOs is improved staffing expenditure control. To this end, administrators can simplify all staffing-related tasks by utilizing a healthcare workforce management software platform.
It gives businesses the ability to create better hiring, scheduling, and retention strategies by combining all the required information on a single platform. Over time, this approach greatly reduces employee attrition and improves human resource management.