Overview:

In today’s healthcare environment, labor expense is typically 50 percent of a healthcare system’s annual budget. With software and support available in the industry today, an effective labor management program is within reach of all hospitals and health systems, regardless of their facility size or internal technical expertise. This course will provide an understanding and overview of critical aspects of designing and executing a comprehensive labor management program.

What You Will Learn:

• Assess the various methods of analyzing staffing levels, the metrics used by department managers to assess productivity
• Differentiate variables that impact both productivity and the cost of labor
• Contrast historical labor levels and national comparatives to aid with budget staffing levels, the cost of labor and the components of a full labor management system
• Design department manager accountability

Course Content

This two-day course provide you with the fundamentals of a complete, adaptive labor management program.

As margins continue reimbursements typically established each year by government entities and contractual agreements, efficient labor utilization can have a significant impact on year-end financial performance and margin expectations.

How do you set up a labor management program? What are the key variables? What is the involvement of the executive team versus the departmental directors? Who has the accountability for success of this program?

Each of these questions is critical in designing the labor management program at your facility. This course will provide an understanding and overview of these critical aspects in designing and executing a comprehensive labor management program. With software and support available in the industry today, an effective labor management program is within reach of all hospitals and health systems, regardless of their facility size or internal technical expertise.

Key concepts include:

• Understanding benchmarking comparisons, peer groups and utilizing a comparative database
• Understanding the implications of labor cost reduction based on selection of the benchmark level a hospital wishes to achieve
• How to set a productivity ‘target’ for each department based on historical performance, national and regional peer groups, and current departmental performance
• Calculating and understanding departmental and hospital-wide productivity
• The effect on cost of labor by variables such as skill mix, overtime and flexing staffing to changing volumes
• Understanding the corporate options for labor management and accountability
• Budgeting for labor to predict and control labor expense
• Impacting labor costs without negatively impacting satisfaction scores