Effective workforce manag…effective healthcare delivery. ShiftSelect — A Case Study for Innovation in Scheduling and Staffing There are many great tools, products & solutions available within the scheduling optimization domain like ShiftSelect (as provided by UPMC) that have helped numerous healthcare systems manage their obligation to provide clinical care. In this article, we explore how UPMC has harnessed ShiftSelect to seamlessly manage operations while also boosting staff morale and, consequently enhancing patient outcomes.
Introduction to ShiftSelect
ShiftSelect is a health care workforce management system that offers solutions for staff scheduling, staffing and labor management on the web. This tool, now part of symplr through API Healthcare, is a complete suite designed to support the demands required in healthcare organizations. It provides several functions to help with easy staff schedule creation, avoid understaffing and give employees more freedom support their work/life balance efforts.
The same concept is applicable with UPMC, which itself serves as one of the largest health systems in America and has been rolling out ShiftSelect nationwide. With 40+ hospitals and more than 700 outpatient settings, you can imagine how it is very difficult for UPMC to manage such a large workforce. And luckily, ShiftSelect has this problem solved altogether and introduced a more detailed platform that satisfies both business needs of the organization i.e., operations as well as personal need whether it is employees.
How ShiftSelect Works
Functioning as a centralized hub, ShiftSelect facilitates smoother interaction between managers and the workforce. Functions offered by this tool
- Self-Scheduling Empowers employees to see open shifts and choose which they want based on their availability. This functionality provides staff members with more control over their shift patterns, which can mean higher job satisfaction and lower churn as a result.
- Automated Scheduling: Managers can use ShiftSelect to automate scheduling, helping them better coordinate staff availability with skills and departmental needs. This is supposed lighten the load for managers to ensure that shifts are getting effectively filled.
- Shift Swapping:Employees can trade or swap shifts via the platform with manager approval. This flexibility ensures staff can fulfill their personal commitments outside of work without interfering with hospital operations.
- Overtime Management: ShiftSelect records the number of hours worked by individual employees and automatically identifies potential overtime situations, which can be addressed proactively. Provide this, aid keep your labor costs in check and prevent burnout within team.
- Compliance and Reporting: The platform ensures that the scheduling aligns with labor laws/organizational policies. It even produces in-depth reports to help you gain more granular insights into staffing trends, overtime usage and other critical metrics.
The Impact of ShiftSelect at UPMC
mplementing ShiftSelect has paid off significantly at UPMC, in terms of both the effectiveness and relative happiness among its staff. Since using the audit tool, we have witnessed a number of benefits below:
1. Enhanced Operational Efficiency
Increase ShiftSelect as an Operational Efficiency The regular shift of UPMC is one of the most notable benefits. For UPMC, automation of scheduling and instant staffing has successfully managed staff levels across the enterprise. This has led to greater consistency in the level of care given, ensuring that both you and your family are able to get a hold of staff when needed.
Similarly, the cost of overtime has also been saved significantly by being able to manage it more appropriately. This has allowed UPMC to reduce un-necessary overtime spend and allocate its resources more effectively. Especially crucial in a big system like UPMC, which has large labor costs making up many of the budget.
2. Improved Employee Satisfaction
In addition, employee satisfaction at UPMC is on the rise due to ShiftSelect. With self-scheduling, your staff will be able to pick up shifts that make sense with their lives outside of work in order to achieve a good balance between the two. This is particularly necessary in the healthcare field where hours of work can be erratic and stress levels very high.
On top of that, the process for swapping shifts is much easier and more transparent in terms of scheduling, leading to a better work culture. When employees have autonomy in when and how they accomplish tasks, or simply more control over their work week through remote working options for example, they become less likely to disengage.
3. Better Patient Care
At the end of it all, every healthcare system should aim to deliver optimal care for patients. ShiftSelect helps avoid poor patient outcomes by making sure that the shifts are not only staffed properly but with the right people. These results indicate that our medical teams have a lower risk of being overwhelmed or fatigued, which is likely to reduce error and improve patient care overall.
In addition, the ability this tool has to locate personnel with a specialization and tailor them for specific departments allows patients an opportunity to have a more qualified staff treating them. • This fine-tuned degree of staffing is required in a sophisticated health care environment like UPMC
Challenges and Considerations
But while ShiftSelect promises many rewards, it also poses difficulties in deployment. Implementing a new workforce management tool is not easy for Health Systems as UPMC, or many other Healthcare entities. Challenges which many have to face are
1. Staff Training and Adoption
With adding a new platform such as ShiftSelect, training is required for not only managers but also staff. We need the new transcoding system to work for everyone. UPMC has also made significant investments in training its workforce on how to use the tool and what it can do
2. System Integration
For ShiftSelect to be fully functional, it must be integrated with the organization’s other systems, such as those used for payroll, HR, and patient care. This process may also be time-consuming and complex, but the integration at UPMC’s facilities has been successful.
3. Ongoing Maintenance and Support
Every technology solution needs to be supported and maintained with regard to bug fixes, feature updates, and other issues. UPMC has a team dedicated to managing the platform and providing support.
The Future of ShiftSelect at UPMC
The Future of ShiftSelect at UPMC UPMC’s leadership continues to look for ways to improve the organization’s workforce management in the future. The process landscape is changing, and systems like that may play an increasingly significant role. At the same time, UPMC can consider integrating data analysis into the system to be able to predict staffing needs for various shifts in advance. The availability of AI and machine learning technology may transform the process of staffing entirely by making all the decisions on available data by comparing to historical patterns.
Conclusion
ShiftSelect has significantly improved UPMC’s ability to manage its labor turnover, leading to happier employees, and better healthcare services to the target population. The journey has only begun for UPMC, and SCO is projected to justify the investment when more workers are happy in their working conditions.
