Memorial Health System Dramatically Reduces Healthcare Staffing Costs with ShiftWise Workforce Management System

ShiftWise today announced that Memorial Health System saved more than $500,000 in contingent staffing costs in the eight months since deploying the ShiftWise service. In addition, the ShiftWise workforce management system enables Memorial to more effectively grow, manage and deploy its internal staffing agency of healthcare workers.

Memorial Health System is a 650-bed organization comprised of three hospitals, 12 ancillary facilities and approximately 4,500 employees in the Colorado Springs region. ShiftWise simplified Memorial’s staff management processes by automating the scheduling, credentialing, time tracking and reporting of internal contingent staff throughout the entire healthcare system, enabling Memorial to more easily grow and manage its internal agency efforts.

“ShiftWise has enabled us to grow our internal staffing agency from 113 to 180 employees without having to add any additional staff to manage the process,” said Jonathan Liepe, director of staffing services for Memorial Health System. “Memorial has already reduced its overall supplemental staffing costs by $500,000 by using ShiftWise to build a more robust internal staffing agency to meet the health system’s needs.”

Complete Visibility for Contingent Staffing

ShiftWise ensures that candidate qualifications match the unique requirements for Memorial Health System’s 40 different departments. Memorial can now instantly view which nurses are available to work each day from its internal agency, as well as from staffing suppliers, and then fill all open job orders based on the profiles and skill sets of the people available. This enhanced visibility has provided Memorial with dramatically increased efficiency in its staffing processes, the ability to better maximize its use of both internal and agency workers, and reduced staffing costs for the organization.

“Another thing that really differentiated ShiftWise is its ability to offer consolidated billing and invoicing and online time tracking and record keeping,” said Liepe. “Using ShiftWise, we’ve reduced the time we used to spend reconciling hours worked against time cards and then invoicing by more than 80 percent. Also, now I get just one consolidated invoice per week, instead of 100. The time savings we’ve achieved by using ShiftWise are dramatic.”

Simplified, Proactive Licensure and Credentialing Compliance

Now, Memorial is able to easily meet staff licensure and credentialing requirements such as those outlined by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). The ShiftWise service enables Memorial to more efficiently provide detailed documentation that staff members assigned to each department are properly credentialed. ShiftWise’s pre-emptive scheduling checks ensure that all staff booked to each department meet necessary requirements, and the service generates detailed reports on demand to provide evidence of compliance during an audit.

“In the current economy, where cost savings are critical, we are committed to helping hospitals efficiently and cost-effectively manage their workforces so they can focus on providing the highest levels of patient care,” said Steve Schwartz, CEO of ShiftWise.

Memorial is now working to extend these efficiencies to the booking and managing of non-clinical workers. The organization will ultimately manage supplemental staffing for a number of additional departments, including IT, finance and accounting, administrative support and dietary services, using ShiftWise.

To view a full case study about the benefits that Memorial Health System has experienced through its use of ShiftWise, please visit: http://www.shiftwise.net/Customers/CaseStudies.html.

About ShiftWise

Founded by healthcare staffing professionals, ShiftWise delivers a more efficient way for hospitals and staffing suppliers to quickly and efficiently find and place supplemental healthcare workers. The Web-based ShiftWise service provides hospitals with an unprecedented level of control over their staffing processes, consolidating staff search, booking, billing and record-keeping into a single, easy-to-use interface. The staff self-scheduling component of the ShiftWise solution dramatically improves the recruitment, retention and overall morale of the hospitals' internal staff. Based in Portland, Ore., ShiftWise provides end-to-end workforce management solutions to hundreds of healthcare organizations and multiple state hospital associations nationwide. To learn more about ShiftWise, call 866-399-2220 or visit www.shiftwise.net.