Value-based care and reimbursement require healthcare facilities to implement new programs that promote high quality care, reduce readmissions and raise patient satisfaction scores. To succeed, all of these programs must have one common element – the right staff, in the right place, at the right time.
Cloud-based predictive analytics tools are now being implemented by many organizations to analyze up to five years of historical data, enabling them to identify census patterns and scrutinize labor usage. The results are then used to produce highly accurate forecasts, from quarterly to individual shifts, to manage core staffing requirements, project contingent staffing needs, and optimize total labor spend. This is particularly important for healthcare organizations that have labor costs at or above 45 percent of their net patient revenue.
Predictive labor management is critical because it provides the intelligence needed to proactively maintain the proper staff-to-patient ratios that ensure consistently high quality care, reduce risk, and improve the HCAHPS scores that affect Medicare reimbursement. However, the models used for predictive labor management vary widely, and predictive analytics alone cannot be considered an end-to-end workforce solution.
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The predictive labor management tool your facility selects should have the functionality to provide more than forecasts for budgeting, rosters, and supplemental staffing; it should also produce guidance concerning workload productivity, acuity, and severity. Predictive analytics should not only forecast when, why, and what specific staffing levels are needed. The data must also provide the intelligence an experienced analytics support team can use to determine which additional workforce solution or solutions should be implemented to achieve organizational staffing goals.
These recommendations may include a managed staffing provider program, recruitment process outsourcing, internal resource management, or other options that will lead to an end-to-end, cost-effective program that will meet not only your unique, immediate staffing needs, but serve to predict and manage them in the long-term. Therefore, predictive analytics is the portal for healthcare facilities to implement actionable workforce solutions that ultimately produce measurable results.
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