How to Choose the Right Healthcare Staff Scheduling Software in 2023?
Introduction
Efficient staffing and scheduling decisions are vital for any management team. Staffing operations can be difficult and time-consuming in any industry but the specific demands in the healthcare sector can make these even more challenging. Well-run scheduling processes can save time, reduce overhead costs, and improve patient satisfaction and staff morale, making it crucial to choose the right software solution.
What Is Healthcare Staff Scheduling Software?
Staff scheduling software solutions have been developed to replace pen and paper or spreadsheets previously used for scheduling. This type of digital transformation can streamline workforce management operations and utilise staff more efficiently.
Most workforce management software providers offer cloud-based calendars. Many modern solutions include well-designed drag-and-drop interfaces and provide the ability to measure working hours precisely.
Switching to staff scheduling software has become increasingly popular in the healthcare industry, whether the work is done in hospitals, day clinics, physician practices, medical staffing agencies, nursing homes, domiciliary care or senior living services and other health care providers.
Important Features for Medical Staff Scheduling Software
While there is a multitude of different scheduling software providers in the market, healthcare practice managers must have industry-specific features for the high demands presented by healthcare scheduling.
When deciding on medical staff scheduling software, not every option on the market will satisfy the complex needs of healthcare providers. A platform that is suitable for a small business might not provide the advanced scheduling needs of medical providers.
Therefore it is vital to understand what features will be most vital for healthcare professionals. PARiM staff management software has had its range of features specifically tailored to meet the requirements of the healthcare industry.
Creating Complex Shift Patterns
Employee scheduling solution is at the core of any workforce management software but healthcare organisations need to schedule unusual shift patterns. PARiM has developed tools for advanced shift pattern creation and management essential for healthcare employees.
This gives you more control to create a myriad of shift patterns from the classic 4 on 4 off shifts crucial for scheduling nurses to patterns based on specific dates of a month. With just a few clicks using drag-and-drop, you can publish multiple schedules with complex shift patterns essential for medical practices.
Automatic Push Notifications
Fast and efficient communication is a key factor for healthcare staff scheduling. After you have created shift patterns, PARiM offers multiple ways to quickly inform your staff – SMS, email and automatic push notifications. Push notifications enable management to send out all the required shift details at the click of a button as well as custom reminders about the start of a shift.
This communication works the other way as well – staff can request time off for which management can receive push notifications about and accept or reject these on the go straight from their mobile devices.
Tracking Time and Attendance
A time and attendance tracking system is another cornerstone of a modern workforce management system. With PARiM workforce management platform, employees can conveniently clock in from the app on their mobile devices. Time Clock utilises location services to ensure that clocking is always done at the right place.
The management team is will have access to the real-time dashboard to see which of the employees are doing overtime or being out on a break. Timesheets can then be approved in bulk and the salary information is calculated automatically which can then be sent to payroll.
Staff Qualifications
Some shifts may need employees with additional training. This is very handy to manage with PARiM as you can include qualifications for each employee profile and tag shifts with required qualifications.
When creating a new schedule and inviting staff to apply, an open shift that requires nurses with the training to administrate vaccines will only be visible to nurses with relevant qualifications who can then apply for the shift. This further automates the employee scheduling process and removes the need to manually filter out properly trained staff members.
Staff Data Management
Whether working with large hospitals or small nursing homes, monitoring team data, such as expiring qualifications or visas, is essential to staff management. With PARiM staff data management solution, you can see and scan the data of thousands of people in seconds, using a multitude of filters and columns to highlight needed information.
This makes it easy to track access, qualifications, training and document expiry or leave timestamped and searchable notes on profiles. PARiM mobile app also makes it convenient to manage the latest absence requests, shift applications and timesheets on the go.
Complex Pay Rates
A schedule with holidays and overtime hours presents the challenge of different pay rates. PARiM offers a comprehensive system for creating complex pay rules that will work seamlessly with timesheets to automatically calculate salaries for the payroll provider.
Pay rates can be matched according to individual qualifications and experience or according to periods or hours. For holidays, you can use multipliers, additional hourly rates and additional fixed pay.
How Does Healthcare Staff Scheduling Software Work?
Even with spreadsheets ditched, setting up dedicated employee scheduling software may present a challenge, especially for newcomers. PARiM employee scheduling platform offers complex functionality yet a simple staffing process.
Setting Up the Software
When setting up the system, first provide management with credentials for system access. Managers can then enter staff information, qualifications and availability based on individual schedule requests.
Schedule Creation
After you have created a database of your staff you can automatically generate schedules based on availability and request preferences. You can share schedules with relevant staff members via SMS, Email or in-app push notifications. All of these can be combined to suit your needs. For in-app notifications, ask your employees to download the mobile app and switch on push notifications.
Shift Requests and Absence Management
When management has published schedules, staff will be able to apply for open shifts. Managers can then approve or reject shift requests or have the approval done automatically. Staff can request time off from their mobile app and managers can instantly approve or reject requests from their respective mobile apps.
Monitor schedules
Time clock offers managers a complete view of time keeping to monitor attendance and track time-off requests and approvals. Managers can approve timesheets in bulk to streamline the process of payroll calculation.
Employee Scheduling Software Benefits
While staff scheduling software may seem just another drop in the ocean of digital transformation, the benefits can be broad and substantial.
Increased Management Productivity
Timesheet approval and pay processing can account for 90%-95% of resource allocation for time and attendance tracking. These are costs that can be significantly reduced with the right staff management solution. Automated scheduling can save time spent on manual tasks and administrative work and which can then be invested in other operations.
Better Staff Utilisation
Solve the complex puzzle of staff scheduling. Employee scheduling software can help optimise staff schedules based on their skill sets, availability, and workload to ensure proper coverage and fair distribution of work shifts within the team.
Team Efficiency
Workforce scheduling software will facilitate communication between staff and management, ensuring everyone is on the same page. Touchpoints will be significantly reduced as schedules and open shifts are readily available on employees' mobile devices. Open shifts will be filled faster as your team will not need to manage any spreadsheets or worry about lost emails. As a bonus, staff can be called via mobile app to save management from having to keep everyone's numbers on their phones.
Compliance with Labour Regulations
Workforce scheduling software can help ensure compliance with regulations, such as avoiding over-scheduling or under-scheduling staff. At the same time, it will make it easier for employees to manage their work-life balance.
Improved Patient Satisfaction
Happy patients require engaged staff. Scheduling software can ensure adequate staffing levels, reduce wait times, improve patient experience and guarantee quality care. For a staffing organisation, patient satisfaction can nurture partnerships with healthcare organisations.
How much does medical staff scheduling software cost?
Staff scheduling software providers will offer different pricing structures. One of the most common pricing models is built around the number of users. This will benefit smaller organisations as their staff will be significantly smaller compared to large enterprises.
For bigger businesses, this may not be the best option, especially when utilising a temporary workforce or dealing with seasonality. In these cases, an employee scheduling platform built around a per-user pricing model will not be the most efficient option, as costs remain the same even when not scheduling any shifts.
PARiM offers a cost-on-demand model with no per-user pricing which can make it attractive for large healthcare providers. This pricing model is structured around scheduled hours which means it is scalable with your business. When the low season comes and the number of scheduled hours decreases, the costs of using PARiM staff scheduling software will also be reduced.
Trusted by leading healthcare providers
Interim Healthcare Minneapolis is one of the leading healthcare providers in the US. Before PARiM, they had to contact the staff and inform them about the available shifts via email, text or voicemail. With the PARiM app, scheduling operations have been sped up as each scheduler can now fill 1,500 shift hours per week which accounts for a 50% increase on the previous 1,000 shift hours.
Simplify Your Healthcare Staff Scheduling
You can have a hands-on introduction to PARiM cloud-based solution and request a 14-day free trial with no credit card required to start scheduling immediately. PARiM team is always ready to guide you through the software functionality. Book a free demo today.
