Bruce Baron

 

In a study of Canadian nurses, researchers found that absenteeism rates among nurses – a major contributor to open shifts and overtime expenses – averaged 8% and could be even higher for less skilled healthcare professionals. At these absenteeism rates, typical eldercare providers face unplanned, open shifts nearly every day.

At Life Care Center’s Attleboro Community there were typical challenges related to managing open shifts and overtime expenses. Overtime expenses were higher than the executive director wanted. It was a cumbersome process of finding coverage for staff call-outs and unplanned, open shifts.

Finding coverage for open shifts is a challenge and often they come at the worst times.  These shifts generally take 2-3 hours to fill, sometimes require negotiation and coercion skills and often end up being covered with someone on overtime. They are stressful and are a prime reason that employee turnover for staff schedulers remain at a high level.  

Our company offers a solution: A low cost, easy-to-use automated systems that can reduce the coverage for staff call outs and open shifts process from 2-3 hours to 10-15 minutes and reduce overtime expenses by up to 25%.

Life Care Center of Attleboro used the VoiceFriend Notification Solution and its messaging system. The results? In Attleboro, their efforts to find coverage for staff call-outs was reduced from hours to minutes – greatly reducing frustration levels. Ever better, overtime expenses were also reduced. 

After successfully utilizing the system for open shifts, the team expanded the use of VoiceFriend to include in-service training reminders, facility events and activities and positive announcements.

Bruce Baron is CEO of VoiceFriend. He can be reached at [email protected].