Strutture medico-sanitarie |
Classic work time scheduling in the healthcare sector is often an extremely complicated and rather time-consuming job. While staffing must be kept to a minimum to keep costs down, patient care cannot ever be compromised.
In order to provide the best possible care for their patients, the daily routine of doctors, nurses, specialists, clinicians and all other healthcare workers must be scheduled well in advance. This cannot be considered without recognizing the nature of the task – part-time, split time and rotating schedules for many workers, including occasional night shifts, weekend work as well as standby-, function-based or background shifts. For some ‘round-the-clock’ availability – 24 hours a day and at 365 days a year – requires a high degree of flexibility in productive operations and service. The nature of the industry requires it be responsive to emergency situations – not only accidents, but the planning of a person’s working time so that they meet their needs, as well as fulfill their obligations on the job. It is clear that complex time
models and a number of standby systems are needed to achieve such flexibility. In the healthcare workforce, time models and shift systems often overlap or are merged with one another. In some departments or facilities, a conventional scheduling method may be employed, e. g. the classic daily shift schedules for permanent employee groups such as duty nurses, day clinics, intensive care, anesthesia, etc. In other areas, such as hospitals and emergency response, such scheduling might only be good for the core staff. Cross-functional scheduling is often necessary in order to adequately schedule coverage of standby and function-related shifts or background supports across different facilities. Due to changes in legal and collective labor agreements, the well-worn methods seem doomed to failure. The fact that personnel costs are by far the largest billable area in the healthcare sector (60 to 75 percent of the total cost) makes efficient and future-oriented scheduling tools indispensable. In personnel planning of medical professionals, the legal regulations for allowed working time, plus any number of collective labor agreements and specific work agreements must be considered.
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