3 Benefits of Electronic Time Scheduling for Healthcare Services Providers

Healthcare service providers have to deal with multiple issues. From making sure patients are well cared for to vetting employees and contractors, service providers such as clinics, aged care, and home care service providers have to juggle many tasks at once.

Employee time scheduling is one of the most persistent problems in the industry. On paper, it ought to be one of the easiest things to take care of, but in reality, managing schedules can turn into a nightmare. Add to this the complexity of rolling schedules and task tracking, and it’s easy to see why so many healthcare service providers struggle.

Healthcare employee scheduling isn’t painful anymore, thanks to sophisticated software tailored to the industry’s unique needs. Here are 3 benefits of adopting an electronic scheduling solution.

Build Efficiency and Scale Easily

Staff onboarding tends to pose a bottleneck for most service providers. Accounting for your employees’ schedule preferences and matching them with patient needs can turn into a nightmare quickly. An electronic solution helps service providers plan schedules weeks in advance while ensuring the right professionals are available in the optimal amount.

In addition to creating teams and scheduling times for them, you can also automate finding last-minute replacements. Team members can specify which times they’ll be available to work in case a last-minute replacement is needed, and the software sends a notification to them should a primary team member drop out.

The result is a better staff experience and higher retention rates, something that goes a long way towards reducing employee turnover. Instead of requiring lengthy approval chains for time off and schedule changes, you can automate all these processes and give your employees full control of their schedules.

Best of all, software helps service providers run more efficiently. By deriving hours worked from employee time schedules, clinics and other service providers can project employee costs and manage workloads to ensure employee satisfaction. The result is lower staff attrition and better scheduling which leads to massive cost savings.

Manage Workers Remotely

As an operation grows, time scheduling becomes more complex. Often, most service providers localize their services. For instance, when expanding to a second location, the first location’s professionals aren’t always considered or prioritized in the new location’s employee scheduling. 

The reason is it’s too complex to manage multiple employees across locations. This situation becomes a problem if employees with specialized skills work in one location but need to be present elsewhere. It also leads to overhiring and poor workforce efficiency. A good software provider will help you account for all of your employees’ skills at every location.

Care services providers can build a database of employee skills and match them to locations where their services are needed. Location details, employee hours tracking, and attendance are all handled seamlessly.

An electronic solution also provides a single communications hub which makes sure there are no misunderstandings when communicating with remote staff. Managing remote schedules is as easy as tapping a few buttons and removes the stress from ensuring patients are well cared for.

Reduce Employee Admin Burden

Achieving ideal staffing levels is a challenge for healthcare service providers. Scheduling becomes complex the larger the facility is, and service providers spend more resources on employee admin to ensure efficiency. However, this only creates more complex workflows that leave employees dissatisfied.

There’s also an additional financial burden that the company has to bear, which reduces profit margins. An electronic solution simplifies and automates many scheduling tasks and ensures that human intervention is needed only in extreme cases. Employee admin departments can spend more time analyzing data and creating optimal schedules.

Wage and cost tracking is also simplified, thanks to every timesheet having a digital footprint. Transferring data from timesheets to wage reports is automatic, and employees can rest assured that all of their hours are accounted for. Overtime calculations, which can become complex given custom needs, are also automatic.

The result is a happier workforce than knows it is being compensated fairly and an employee admin department that can ensure patients are always receiving the care they need, no matter their location or requirements.

Cost Savings and More

Automating employee scheduling has many benefits for healthcare service providers. The ones highlighted in this article are just a few examples. Electronic solutions remove many traditional roadblocks to efficiency in companies, and healthcare service providers are no exception.