It’s the year of flexible scheduling. Here’s what that means. 

Someone called out. Again. 

It’s 5 a.m., and the next shift starts at 6, sending you into the all-too-common staffing scramble. 

You’re calling three different full-time nurses to see if they can cover, texting your float pool to see if anybody can pick up the shift, and calling an agency to send in backup, only to be stuck on hold for 20 minutes. 

An hour later, you’re frazzled, tired, and STILL don’t have someone to cover the shift. So instead of being able to provide care when you need it,  you have to call patients and cancel their surgeries, costing your facility thousands of dollars in revenue. 

But this isn’t just a one-off experience. The cycle will repeat itself until administrators find a better way. 

What causes the staffing scramble? 

Some might say that the staffing scramble is just a part of working in healthcare, but with access to more technology than ever before, it takes just a few adjustments to make the staffing scramble a thing of the past. 

Healthcare staffing has historically been reactive. You wait for a gap in your schedule, and you fill it with someone. When you’re in the daily shuffle, this can seem like the only way to staff, but it turns into a negative cycle that creates constant urgent requests.

Instead of feeling calm and collected, schedulers become desperate to fill it. They will spend precious time searching for someone, which often leads to paying a premium to get the shift filled, sacrificing precious budget that will ultimately affect revenue.

This cycle creates stress for administrators and can end up costing your facility millions. 

Flexible scheduling eliminates the staffing scramble

Rigid staffing models might seem like they offer a more consistent schedule, but they’re actually breaking efficient staffing. Facilities are asking too much of their already overworked staff, which doesn’t allow for the flexibility needed to function at peak performance. Healthcare is always going to have fluctuating needs, but what impacts those fluctuations can be predictable. 

There are typically more patients in the fall due to flu season. The end of the year will see an increase in elective surgical cases because insurance deductibles have been hit. The summer months will see an increase in outdoor-related injuries. 

These patterns are the key to creating a successful staffing solution. 

When facilities can predict and plan accordingly, they eliminate excess stress and chaos in a moment of crisis. Not only that, but planned-out shifts can lead to better patient outcomes. In fact, 66% of nurses shared that they noticed more positive patient outcomes, less staff stress, and greater overall consistency when shifts were planned versus last-minute. 

It’s not just a revenue issue; it’s a patient outcomes issue. 

Understanding predictability 

Understanding your facility’s patterns is critical when adjusting your staffing strategy. Take a look at the past year of trends and ask yourself a few questions. 

• Which units saw the most callouts? 
• Which floors were more likely to have a higher staff-to-patient ratio? 
• What time of the year was the busiest? 
• When did your staff take more time off? 
• Where did your facility feel stretched too thin? 

Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to build out your staffing strategy; this time, utilize the data to start planning ahead (or let us do it with Medely’s Talent Fusion Optimize). 

Switching to a more proactive approach requires a more thorough understanding of all of your different labor sources: full-time staff, per diem workers, part-time staff, agency staff, and any float pool staff. 

You can then map out your schedule accordingly. 

For example, if you’re working on the schedule for October, start by scheduling out your full-time staff. Then, take into consideration anything that might spike census, whether that’s a flu shot clinic or a surge you had last year that will likely happen again.

Instead of just scheduling full-time staff and hoping that none of them call out, you can bolster your facility with per diem workers to ensure safe staffing ratios are maintained, and this is where Medely’s Talent Fusion Flex comes in.

What is Flex? 

Flex is what Medely originally set out to do. 

Talent Fusion Flex provides facilities access to pre-vetted nurses and health professionals in an instant, with zero long-term commitment (unless you want). Whether it’s a last-minute need or a planned-out need, utilize Flex to post a shift, or multiple shifts, to all eligible nurses and health professionals in your area. You can post shifts for RNs, LVNs, CNAs, techs, therapists, and allied health professionals. 

For example, you might have noticed an uptick in surgery cases the second week in December last year. Instead of waiting for the uptick to happen and scrambling last-minute, simply post a shift to Medely’s platform to fill that gap. Our AI-driven platform will then take your needs and match you with qualified clinicians in seconds, keeping in mind that every booking follows credentialing standards, rate controls, and compliance rules automatically.

When you book with Medely, there’s no financial commitment until the shift is completed. No retainer fees or unexpected charges. This direct access to nurses and health professionals offers facilities more control over their staff, and the elasticity allows facilities to stretch and contract based on their needs, working with the ebbs and flows rather than against them.  

Flex is a tool that facilities can have in their belt. You can still choose which members of your staff you want to utilize for gaps, but Medely offers you the ability to expand your pool to an even larger group of people, ensuring flexible scheduling to keep up with any last-minute cases or surges. 

Find freedom with Flex 

Now, when 5 a.m. rolls around and someone calls out, you just pull out your laptop, post all your shift details on Medely, and wait for it to be filled. Your next hour doesn’t have to be spent chasing someone down; we’ll do all the work for you. 

Flex is just one of the many features that Medely offers. Since 2015, we’ve filled over 2 million shifts, providing hundreds of facilities across the country with stable staffing. One of these facilities was Briarcliff Surgery Center, which utilized flexible scheduling to fill shifts when 10 staff members went on maternity leave.