Technology Slashes Agency Labor Expenses
and Helps Effect ROI of $561,000
In early 2004, Rio Grande Regional Hospital (Rio Grande), a 320-bed Hospital Corporation of America (NYSE: HCA) facility in fast-growing McAllen, Texas, was feeling the pinch of the nationwide nursing shortage.
Despite aggressive national recruiting efforts and generous signing bonuses, the hospitals nurse vacancy rate was hovering around 20 percent, contract labor costs exploded to $800,000 in the first quarter of 2004, and morale among the hospitals 500-plus full-time nurses was near an all-time low.
In search of a solution, the hospital decided to experiment with a new staffing concept called shift-bidding. The idea is straightforward: Create a system that allows full-time employees to compete for unfilled shifts that typically go to agency nurses. By increasing the financial incentive for full-timers to add extra shifts, the dependence on agency labor is reduced.
Rio Grande rolled out Critical Staffer and just one year later, the nursing landscape at Rio Grande had changed dramatically. Thanks to Critical Staffer, the hospital is recognizing many benefits as a result of implementation - some of which include:
- Lowered Costs
- $561,000 in labor cost savings
- 40,000 contract labor hours reduced
- 55% agency labor expense reduction
- Med-surge contract labor costs down 91%
- Decreased Contract Labor
- Reduced number of contract nurse FTEs by ½
- Hired 20 agency nurses
- Increased Administrator Productivity
- Improved Morale
- Staff nurses now have the opportunity to earn the same wage as agency nurses
- 72% of the 500 nurses on staff participate in the process
- Decreased Agency Respiratory Staff Utilization
- Respiratory therapy staff working extra shifts at another local hospital began shift bidding at Rio Grande
- Improved Patient Care
- Staff nurses are much more familiar with organization procedures, personnel and patients
- Improved continuity of care, physician relations and patient satisfaction
To read about the specific benefits being recognized at Rio Grande, please request a copy of the full white paper at www.decisioncritical.com/contactus.asp.
