CUSTOMER STORY:
How NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals Went Agency-Free with the Help of Inovalon Schedule Management
About NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals
NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals is a behavioral health hospital system serving patients with an acute psychiatric crisis and those with medical comorbidities. The hospital manages most of their staff scheduling from their corporate offices, for seven locations across multiple states. The organization is known as one of the largest providers of medical, psychiatric, and neuropsychiatric inpatient treatment in the United States.
Troublesome spreadsheet scheduling
Prior to implementing Schedule Management, staff scheduling at NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals was fully spreadsheet-based. Each location was given their own spreadsheet schedule to manage in partnership with the corporate staffing department. For all involved, this process was tedious, difficult, and frustrating. Schedules had to be manually updated at every call-out, empty shift, and additional person needed.
Plus – this was in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when hospitals and nurses were struggling to remain afloat across operations and clinical care, amidst the burnout of long hours and the overwhelmingly emotional toll of that time in the healthcare industry.
Taking a SaaS-based approach
The need for a better approach was clear. For NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals, getting staffing data in real time transformed their scheduling workflows and efficiency.
Schedule Management delivered clear, actionable staffing data across locations, departments, and license level. And with the power of in-app streamlined staff communications, scheduling leaders could now make data-driven staffing decisions and easily notify their teams of shift needs and changes.
Realizing staffing success across multiple areas
Schedule Management was more than an upgrade from spreadsheet scheduling – it was multiple doors opened for NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals, empowering them to save time, eliminate agency spending, and enhance their survey readiness.
Quick communications
Mass texting notifications turned individual texts and phone calls into one quick communication to offer and pick up open shifts. Nurses now had their schedule available to them inside or outside of the hospital, right on their personal phone or tablet.
The time savings were almost instant and realized at multiple levels. “We utilize the mass texting notification capability pretty consistently with our nursing staff to offer open shifts. What this capability has allowed us to do is give time back to our staff – from the scheduler to the Director of Nursing. The instant communication capability [in Schedule Management] allows us to send out mass text notifications all at one time for shift openings and get those responses back in the system.”
NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals didn’t stop there. Staffing leaders introduced three different levels of PRN (“pro re nata,” or, “as the need arises”) nursing, leaning into gig working by allowing nurses to pick up the most convenient shifts for their schedules while meeting their specified number of hours worked to achieve paycheck incentives.
The result: a significant increase in nurses picking up shifts – shifts that work best for them and their home life.
”We utilize the mass texting notification capability pretty consistently with our nursing staff to offer open shifts. What this capability has allowed us to do is give time back to our staff - from the scheduler to the Director of Nursing. The instant communication capability [in Schedule Management] allows us to send out mass text notifications all at one time for shift openings and get those responses back in the system."
Erin RempalaDirector of Purchasing, NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals
”Utilizing the software has allowed us to become more competitive with nursing. Prior to having Schedule Management, we had between 45-50% of our staff in hospitals that were agency nurses. Now, we’ve been able to go agency-free, and that’s the best thing for us that’s happened. We now have zero external staffing teams in our hospitals."
Erin RempalaDirector of Purchasing, NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals
Agency-free staffing
With increased communication capabilities and a new, successful incentive program, this behavioral health hospital was able to go from about half of their staff being agency nurses, to completely in-house staffing.
This translates to cost savings, time savings, and long-term retention savings. The internal buy-in is more than managing day-to-day staffing needs – it’s a sign that nurses are satisfied with their organization’s new, SaaS-based scheduling standards and engaged with their work.
Stress-free survey readiness
Before using Schedule Management, regulatory surveys were a big challenge for this organization, particularly retrieving an assignment sheet. To answer the survey question, for example, “Who was the nurse taking care of Patient A on February 1, 2022?”, scheduling leaders had to manually look through Excel schedules one by one. And at times, simply finding the right spreadsheet to reference was an issue, not to mention the appropriate nurse assignment within that schedule.
Schedule Management simplified survey readiness. To help prepare for surveys, schedule leaders can pull one built-in report to get all the information they need with the correct patient’s name, their nurse, the day they cared for the patient, and their shift assignment.
Leaders now have the confidence to know exactly who was on which shift on which day, in a matter of seconds, rather than taking hours out of their day to consult multiple spreadsheets that may or may not be up-to-date.
”Technology has expanded the ability for impactful work, and it was crucial that NPH leverage this technology for the success and advancement of our organization. Utilizing Schedule Management has allowed our teams to work at the top of their licenses(s), advancing our mission to provide compassionate care to the patients entrusted to us."
Erin RempalaDirector of Purchasing, NeuroPsychiatric Hospitals
Transform your behavioral health scheduling
Ready to improve outdated workforce processes?
Replace spreadsheets with streamlined, SaaS-based staff scheduling to improve workflow efficiency, nurse engagement, and reporting. Discover the power of modern staff scheduling with Inovalon. See for yourself by scheduling a demo today.
