A lot of energy has been exerted and momentum achieved in this market over the last year, according to Jared Peterson, director of field operations for KLAS. The field of players is growing as more and more hospitals implement staff/nursing scheduling applications. The big technology push has been to provide Web front-end functionalities such as self-scheduling and bid shifting that can be done remotely. Peterson said the industry is also moving towards an integrated solution, bringing together HR payroll and time and attendance components with staff scheduling, which will allow managers a full view of staffing needs and costs. The ranked list for staff/nursing scheduling is based on KLAS’s Top 20: 2006 Mid-Year Report. KLAS released its Staff/Nursing Scheduling: A Market Review in July 2006.

api Software Inc.

ActiveStaffer

KLAS Rank No. 1

Features: ActiveStaffer automates and streamlines scheduling processes so that healthcare organizations can manage resources more efficiently and better control labor costs. The application includes a range of employee tools, such as self-scheduling, shift bidding and a self-service portal, as well as administrative tools, including a supervisor portal and reporting engine. In addition, the EdTrack module lets users track and manage employees’ education requirements, including licenses, certifications and skill levels.

How integrated is your application with other labor management applications such as time and attendance, payroll, etc.? ActiveStaffer is integrated with API’s complete suite of labor resource management applications, which include time and attendance, education tracking, payroll/HR, access control, workflow and productivity management. API has also developed interfaces with numerous financial, time and attendance and HR applications from other healthcare IT vendors.

Do you offer nurse bidding and self-scheduling functionalities, and how much of your client base is taking advantage of these functionalities? ActiveStaffer includes shift bidding and self-scheduling functionality, enabling healthcare organizations to schedule employees in a way that improves morale and increases satisfaction. The shift-bidding module enables employees to bid on shifts that they are eligible to work based on skill sets. Likewise, the self-scheduling module lets employees view and request shifts that are available for them to work based on skill sets and other pre-determined criteria. Approximately 75 percent of API customers have some self-scheduling functionality.   

Are your management reports customizable and easy to generate? ActiveStaffer lets users easily generate real-time reports that provide a customized look at the information they need to manage resources more effectively, minimize overtime and retain a qualified staff. Users can also choose from a number of standard reporting options or create their own. They can also take advantage of the ActiveRoster feature, which gives managers the ability to determine which employees have clocked in for shifts in real-time.

Kronos

Workforce Scheduler

KLAS Rank No. 2

Features: With three decades of experience serving more than 2,400 hospitals, Kronos for Healthcare delivers its Web-based scheduling and staffing application integrated with its industry-leading time and attendance and labor productivity tools. Workforce Scheduler is designed to effectively plan, schedule, deploy and manage nursing and other non-exempt staff. It enables providers to manage coverage, quickly fill open shifts, plan shift-by-shift staffing based on census and acuity, view staff on-premises, scheduled staff not yet present and more.  

How integrated is your application with other labor management applications such as time and attendance, payroll, etc.? Kronos for Healthcare is a complete workforce management solution designed to meet all the requirements of today’s complex healthcare organization. Addressing the challenges that are inherent to managing the workforce in healthcare, this comprehensive, integrated suite of Web-based applications includes labor analytics, labor productivity management, staff scheduling, absence management, HR, payroll and time and attendance.

Do you offer nurse bidding and self-scheduling functionalities, and how much of your client base is taking advantage of these functionalities? Yes. Kronos for Healthcare self-service capabilities empower staff to manage personal information and work preferences such as time off requests, preferred shifts, swap shifts and bid on open shifts. It provides the capability to post available shifts and allow employees to submit offers to cover open shifts. Workforce Scheduler improves employee satisfaction by engaging staff in the scheduling process. Employee preferences and self-scheduling help employees get more of the assignments that they want. Nurses can bid on the shifts that they want to work through an easy Web interface. This reduces absenteeism and turnover, which has a direct impact on the bottom line. One hospital even advertises Web-based self-scheduling as a benefit for nurses as a recruiting tool.

Are your management reports customizable and easy to generate? Yes. Workforce Scheduler is delivered with a variety of Crystal Reports that can present your labor data in a number of formats. Managers and other users can access labor information in the context that they prefer so they can best leverage labor resources. The standard output format is Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format. Alternative formats for emailing include HTML, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and Rich Text Format. Coverage reports provide views across multiple shifts and zones, so that managers can get a complete view of required and scheduled staff.

Per Se Technologies

ANSOS One-Staff

KLAS Rank No. 3

Features: ANSOS One-Staff, Per-Se’s enterprise staffing and labor cost management solution, enables healthcare organizations to achieve greater productivity and control staffing costs. ANSOS One-Staff increases operational efficiency by providing facilities with enterprise-wide labor cost management tools that allow management to make informed realtime and future staffing decisions. ANSOS One-Staff also improves employee recruitment and retention with flexible staffing capabilities designed to accommodate individual preferences.

How integrated is your application with other labor management applications such as time and attendance, payroll, etc.? ANSOS One-Staff features dozens of seamlessly integrated, standard interfaces that provide for a comprehensive, integrated solution with transparent functionality. This market-leading staffing solution ensures “the right people in the right place at the right time” at the lowest cost and provides interfaces to provide real-time decision grade information, improve profitability through labor management and enhances accuracy and reduces costs through direct links to payroll systems.  The ANSOS One-Staff product also offers employees self-service components via the Web as well as simplifies creation of reports for JCAHO and other regulatory agencies. Our interfaces provide portability of data without the need for specific interface/integration tools or transfer protocols.  For example, ANSOS One-Staff interfaces have been developed for uploading pay data to many different payroll vendors, including Meditech, PeopleSoft, Lawson, Ceridian, Millennium, HBOC, SMS, Dun & Bradstreet, ADP, Cyborg, Ross, GTE, Integral and IBAX, among others. The Timecard with Payroll Interface allows for automatic transmission of timecard data directly to payroll, in correct payroll format, saving up to 80% of the time required for manual transmission. It eliminates manual keypunching of payroll information and associated errors.

Do you offer nurse bidding and self-scheduling functionalities, and how much of your client base is taking advantage of these functionalities? Yes. Our staff scheduling solution delivers multiple Web-based nurse bidding and self-scheduling strategies to increase staff recruitment and retention. Per-Se also offers shift-bidding as an add-on ASP product. Our eShift product enables hospitals to apply a new approach to the difficult and costly task of filling open shifts. It allows employees and pre-qualified external healthcare professionals easy access to view, request, and/or bid on available shifts. The scheduling managers decide which methodology they would like to use in order to publish shifts: fixed rate (regular time), premium pay or multi-phase. If bidding is desired, the manager may choose either the dynamic auction or the best bid method. eShift then presents all open shifts to prospective seekers using a hospital-defined hierarchy and various availability filters. By granting clients the ability to customize their system from the start, Per-Se allows each hospital the opportunity to implement the process that best aligns the policies of the healthcare provider, departmental procedures and union rules. When the scheduling manager closes the availability process for open shifts, the most qualified employee is selected based on hospital-defined criteria, such as staff seniority, specialty training and experience, wages, impact on overtime and unit experience. The scheduling manager has control of the entire process.

Are your management reports customizable and easy to generate? Yes. ANSOS One-Staff provides the user with more than 200 standard management analyses and reports based on the information accumulated through normal daily operations. Our product will provide for most, if not all, of the information our clients desire through such standard reports, which do not require any additional effort by the end user. In addition, ANSOS One-Staff includes two dedicated report writers, which allow users to build, save and run an unlimited number of customized reports simply by utilizing information gleaned from the course of daily staffing resource allocation. Users may easily edit a pre-existing report or create a report entirely from scratch. ANSOS One-Staff also provides numerous reports centered on the individual employee, including the Annual Attendance Report, which shows an individual’s detailed attendance history (up to a year on one page). ANSOS One-Staff includes a new hires report, a transfers report, a termination report and a turnover analysis in order to help managers organize their employees and examine overall coverage. All ANSOS One-Staff reports are extremely detailed and inherently configurable by the user.

AtStaff

ClairVia

KLAS Rank No. 4

Features: The ClairVia outcomes-driven demand management solution from AtStaff monitors and forecasts patient demand so that staffing resources are precisely deployed to meet outcomes-driven patient demand requirements. ClairVia tracks and updates–via real-time, event-driven technology and HL7 messaging–each patient’s progress along his or her own, outcomes-based staffing care pattern. The result is a continuous, accurate measurement of patient demand, integrated into a comprehensive staff scheduling and management solution.

How integrated is your application with other labor management applications such as time and attendance, payroll, etc.? ClairVia integrates fully with all leading labor management applications, such as time and attendance, HR and payroll systems, to provide comprehensive control over staffing management and productivity. The software’s integration capabilities include HRIS import, eLearning, budget import, census/acuity import, ADT import, HL7 non-ADT, time and attendance, and payroll.

The HRIS import interface is used to import employee demographic data into ClairVia, keeping employee information up to date. This removes the need to manually update employee information that is kept current in the Human Resource Information System (HRIS).

In eLearning, the import of employee competency and similar data into ClairVia provides a single source for employee data. This interface complements the HRIS import.

The budget import interface is used to populate ClairVia budget tables from an outside source, eliminating the need to manually enter the values. ClairVia budgeting accommodates budgets for any interval of time.

The Census/Acuity import interface is used to import census or acuity data into ClairVia for calculating target/workload-based staffing needs. It is typically run once per shift.

The admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) import interface is real time, providing ClairVia with a continual stream of ADT transactions. This interface enables tracking of ADT events by time of day and enhances productivity reporting. The ADT index and impact on workload are shown in all productivity reporting pulled from the ADT census.

For departments that draw upon charge data for workload measurement, the HL7 non-ADT (or DFT, Detailed Financial Transactions) interface pulls data as processed, and calculates total workload as received. This interface is commonly used to calculate workload in radiology, lab and similar departments.

The Time and Attendance interface is typically a bi-directional interface. Schedules are sent to Time and Attendance to facilitate enhanced tracking such as tardies and to populate employee time cards with non-productive time. Punch data is processed and sent to ClairVia to ensure that productivity reports show the actual hours worked versus time scheduled. This interface provides significant time savings to managers in the processing of payroll data and enhances ClairVia’s reporting capabilities.

The payroll import is run once payroll has closed and typically includes hours by pay code mapped to specific pay categories in ClairVia. This interface supports a number of additional productivity reports that include detailed cost analyses combined with department-specific workload data.

Do you offer nurse bidding and self-scheduling functionalities, and how much of your client base is taking advantage of these functionalities? AtStaff’s ClairVia solution furnishes each employee with his or her own, customizable, Web-based dashboard for employee self-service and communication. Employee self-service in ClairVia gives employees direct access to specific functions of the scheduling process, resulting in streamlined operations and increased staff autonomy. Using a standard Web browser, employees log into their personalized ClairVia portal and actively participate in the scheduling process. Supported by a secure login, access may be provided from within the healthcare organization, from employees’ homes or from virtually any place with Internet access.

Employees can view their schedules at any time, submit schedule requests electronically, initiate and check the status of schedule requests, receive notification of upcoming competency expirations, and send and receive messages to other employees, including shift-swap invitations with peers and messages to and from management.

In addition to facilitating online requests, self-scheduling and shift-swapping, the ClairVia system also offers what it calls Shift Opportunities. The Shift Opportunities feature helps fill open shifts by providing employees with up-to-date lists of the open shifts they are required to work. Employees are offered the opportunity to earn (or bid on) rewards for signing up to work open shifts. Managers have great flexibility in determining actual monetary compensation or award points. Approximately 80 percent of our client base offers Web access to its staff members for employee self-service.

Are your management reports customizable and easy to generate? The management reports produced by ClairVia are customizable and easy to generate. Each report includes a group of selection parameters to choose from so that each user can customize reports to meet specific needs and requirements. A key factor in report flexibility lies in the quality and usefulness of the data available. ClairVia is unique in its ability to capture and calculate workload based on more sophisticated measures that simple census.

Patient exception tracking provides an easy way to differentiate between average patients (includes in census) and those requiring more or less care from the average, such as 1:1, isolation and sitter patients. An HL7 ADT interface imports ADT transactions, allowing the system to calculate and report on the number of admissions, discharges and transfers by department and shift. Because the software tracks and documents actual patient demand at all points in time, ClairVia justifies both staffing plans and expenses. Since it leverages both financial and clinical data, productivity reports can be analyzed and viewed from a common perspective. For example, ClairVia’s event-driven orientation allows organizations to view productivity reporting based not only by shift or midnight census (traditional approach), but on any specific time interval of interest, such as hour, by quarter hour or by certain “ad hoc” hours) such as the four hours around a shift change).

 Below are noteworthy products in this category that were not ranked by KLAS:

The Kramer Group

Registration Quality Improvement (RQi)

Thornberry Limited

Ndoc

ShiftWise

ShiftWise

Workbrain

Workbrain for Healthcare

Per-Se Technologies

Per-Se ANSOS*

*According to KLAS’ Top 20: 2006 Mid-Year Report for Staff/Nurse Scheduling, this product had preliminary scores that did not meet KLAS’ minimum confidence level but were included in the report.