OnShift Introduces Acuity-Based Staffing Software

CLEVELAND, OH--(Marketwire - Aug 28, 2012) -  OnShift today announced Staff Exact, new acuity-based staffing features that extend the scheduling capabilities of OnShift Software. By connecting staffing plans with resident acuity levels, Staff Exact identifies precise staffing requirements down to the hour by location and position to ensure high quality resident care and control over labor costs. Long-term care and senior living providers now gain full transparency into how acuity variances affect their labor budgets.

News Facts

• Staff Exact determines the exact number of hours and HPPD (hours per patient day) requirements by position to meet the acuity needs of residents through proper staffing and quality care.
• Staff Exact supports user-defined care standards and configurable acuity levels, and eliminates guesswork by automatically calculating staffing requirements based on intensity of care needs and census.
• Staff Exact applies to multiple care settings, including skilled nursing and assisted living.
• With Staff Exact, managers can more evenly distribute complex resident cases among employees and promote consistent assignments, thereby promoting fairness, avoiding understaffing and improving workforce satisfaction and quality of care.
• Community and facility managers gain a better understanding of staffing patterns and labor costs with visibility into staffing variances against both fixed labor budgets and fluctuating acuity targets.
• Staff Exact is part of OnShift staff scheduling and shift management software, which automates scheduling, fills open shifts in minutes, prevents overtime, and balances staffing levels.

Supporting Quotes

"With OnShift's Staff Exact we can keep a closer eye on our costs by identifying when our staffing needs to flex up or down based on the care and services that our residents require. Our Executive Directors and Directors of Nursing are thrilled that OnShift does all the math, eliminates guesswork, and overcomes the time and effort they used to undertake in their offline, manual processes," stated Rick Kamminga, COO, Watermark Retirement Communities.

"Staffing and labor management have become top priorities for providers as they continue to face reimbursement cuts, reform, regulatory change, and a huge focus on delivering quality care at low costs," stated Mark Woodka, CEO, OnShift. "Providers must take their staffing strategies to the next level, considering the acuity of their residents and the services they require every week, every day, and every shift. Labor is their largest expense and acuity-based staffing will not only help ensure the quality care residents deserve but also reduce costs during these challenging times."

Supporting Research and Industry Initiatives

• Five-Star Quality Rating System - The CMS Five-Star Quality Rating System addresses acuity in rating nurse staffing within facilities. Consumers use the Five-Star Ratings as a guide in evaluating care environments.
• Quality Initiatives - Staffing measures and goals are part of industry quality programs including AHCA/NCAL's Quality Initiative and Advancing Excellence. In addition, several states have launched programs that base some Medicaid payments on quality standards that include nurse staffing.
• Healthcare Reform - Healthcare reform embraces the principle of providing the highest quality care at the lowest cost possible. Emerging collaborative care models and a focus on reducing hospital readmissions intensify the need for proper staffing to ensure high quality care, drive efficiencies, and control costs.
• More Patients & Rising Acuity - By 2030 the U.S. population age 65+ is expected to double. In addition, the aging population is becoming more clinically complex with acuity rates rising up to 2.5% annually¹, emphasizing the need to appropriately manage staffing levels to meet growing intensity of care requirements.

Additional Resources
OnShift Blog
OnShift Web Site

About OnShift, Inc.
Long-term care and senior living providers rely on OnShift staff scheduling and shift management software to control labor costs and increase efficiencies so nurses have more time for care. OnShift predicts and prevents overtime and understaffing while dramatically reducing time spent on scheduling and managing open shifts. Fully integrated with time-keeping, HR, clinical and payroll systems, OnShift provides a unified view into staffing levels and labor costs across buildings. Customers choose OnShift because it's the easiest-to-use scheduling solution with a tightly integrated communications platform, delivering fast ROI. For more information visit www.onshift.com.

¹ "The effect of state Medicaid case-mix payment on nursing home resident acuity," Zhanlian Feng, Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research, Brown University