Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, announced that it has created a centralized office specifically to focus on scheduling that better coordinates hiring and work shifts.

Managing staff is a common challenge in healthcare. Vendors that market staff management systems include IBM Watson Health, ANM Healthcare, Cerner and MedPro Healthcare Staffing, to name just three among many companies providing similar services.

The intent of the scheduling office at Bryan Medical Center is to align labor resources with the medical center’s strategic goals and patient needs. Most hospitals and health systems across the country have similar goals on this score.

“Staffing is such an important part of the day-to-day functioning of the units, and to have the support of the central staffing office is beneficial,” said Angela McCown, RN, orthopedic/trauma and medical surgery oncology nurse manager at the Bryan Medical Center. “The staffing office knows the resources available throughout the organization.” 

The management tool, Cerner’s Clairvia Staff Manager, makes it possible for Bryan’s employees to better project staffing resources. It creates and manages schedules for the medical, surgical, intensive care unit, neonatal intensive care unit, labor, delivery, emergency and nursing departments.

“It also provides a tool for administrative managers to manage the complexities of patient throughput, allowing us to make adjustments in our daily staffing levels throughout the day to best meet the needs of our patients,” added Lisa Vail, chief nursing officer and vice president of patient care services. 

Prior to adding the new IT, the staffing office only scheduled nursing, but since then, leadership added 11 ancillary departments without hiring more staff. The eight staffing assistants create schedules for 34 nursing units and 11 ancillary units.

Office staff release schedules on a staggered basis to distribute the workload evenly and provides monthly reports on various staffing issues.

Correction: A previous version said that Bryan Medical Center this week deployed Cerner’s scheduling tool. Instead, Bryan was already running the Cerner software, which was a part of what enabled it to create the new centralized staffing office.

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Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com