Problem statement

Staffing is a major problem in the health care industry.  It is imperative to point out that the staffing problem has been an ongoing concern and which to a great extent influence the safety of both the patients and the nurse.             Rising patient acuity and shortened hospital stays has contributed to these challenges. Ever healthcare provider is striving to ensure that they have an optimal nurse-patient ratio. In essence ensuring adequate staffing in the healthcare sector remains a major problem that requires urgent attention.  Achieving adequate staffing levels will be instrumental to ensuring reduced medical and medication errors, decreased patient complications, decreased mortality rates, reduced staff fatigue and improved job satisfaction amongst the firm’s employees. It is worth noting that employees’ satisfaction is integral for employee retention as well as their productivity. It is therefore an obligation of the healthcare providers to ensure that they get the staffing solution in their respective health care facilities. Excess staffing hurts margins while being understaffed, which requires overtime and/or premium pay that also hurts margins and causes less than optimum quality of care.  The latter problem adversely affects patients and staff satisfaction.

Measurable goals and objectives

As aforementioned, the primary objective is implementation of a staffing program that will meet the expected international standards. Health care providers are an important part to an effective health system. In essence, the primary problem is determining the optimal staffing levels in a health set up given different rules and regulations. The safety of both the nurses and patients remain one of the most important goals of the staffing program. Adequate nurse staffing is key to patient care and nurse retention, while inadequate staffing endangers patients and drives nurses from their profession. The staffing process must be in accordance with the safe-staffing ratios that outline the number of health care providers that must cater for a given number of patients. It is worth noting that optimum staffing will ensure that there are reduced medication errors, decreases patient complications, decreased mortality and reduced staff fatigue among others.

Optimal staffing is essential in order to provide optimal patient care. Besides the patient’s safety and that of the staff, it is also critical to consider other factors such as fixed and variable costs. Newsvendor framework has been widely used to make major staffing decisions. This is a framework use to solve a staffing problem where different information sets are available. The level of daily workload in the health set up plays an important role in making staffing decisions. Previous studies suggest that healthcare providers can save a substantial amount of resource if they make staffing decisions when there is adequate information to guide the decision making process. Framework plays an important role to reduce unnecessary staffing costs that may be incurred as a result of overstaffing (Bowblis, 2011). On the same note, understaffing can lead to increased burn out and amount paid to staff as overtime.  This would also be detrimental to the patient’s safety. It is also worth noting that most healthcare providers are licensed and registered by accrediting bodies. It is therefore important to ensure that the staffing solution is in accordance with the federal statutes.

Resources required

The staffing process will require both financial and human capital. The process of attracting the right staff for the right job will require finances. For instance, the human resource managers must spend money to advertise for the vacant positions. On the same note, the recruitment, interviewing and the placement processes will also require substantial amounts of funds (Codispoti, 2015). On the same note, most of the staffing decisions are made out of census and past data. Organizations will have to spend in research and data collection so as to make informed choices in relation to staffing decisions. This process will also require adequate funding.

Besides the financial capital, human capital will also be of great importance in making these staffing decisions. As aforementioned, staffing decisions are made based on census data as well as patient: nurse ratio guidelines (Baumann & Blythe, 2015).  To get accurate data, the healthcare provider will require human capital to carry out these census data. It is worth to note that variability problem has been a critical hindrance to effective staffing. Therefore having qualified personnel for data collection remains a critical aspect in the staffing process.  On the same note, the process will also require staff to carry out the recruitment, interviewing and placement process.

A list of the tasks that are required for successfully implementing the project

• Collection of data at different times of the day (usually at midnight, at noon, or in the afternoon).
• Determination of patient:nurse ratio
• Advertisement of vacant positions
• Hiring and recruitment process
• Training and career development
• Assigning of duties

Budget

As aforementioned, the staffing process will require both financial and human capital. The human resource department must be ready with all the budgetary allocations to ensure a successful staffing process. The unit must set aside funds for census data collection and determination of the right ratio of patients and nurses. Training and capacity building will also need some funding to ensure that the firm gets the right staffing levels.

Communication plan

Communication is an important aspect in any staffing process. Lack of an effective communication plan in a healthcare sector can be detrimental as it can lead to confusion and delayed service delivery. It is therefore important for hospitals and other health care providers to have an effective communication plan (Baumann & Blythe, 2015). This will enable them to efficiently and securely communicate with physicians and nurses to avoid confusion and successfully navigate emergency situations with minimal missteps. For instance, use of modern technology in favor of the traditional communication method will be instrumental in ensuring a effective communication in the healthcare sector.

Key stakeholders

Implementation of an effective staffing process in a health care provider will have different direct and indirect stakeholders. For instance, the management of the facility will have a leading role the staffing process. They will be responsible in the internal structures as well as the financing f the internal operations of the facility. The human resource department of the facility will also have an important role to play in the staffing process as they will be the direct link between the staff and the organization. Also, accrediting professional bodies and the federal government will also have a supervisory role that will have effect in the staffing process.

References

Baumann, A. & Blythe, J. (2015). Better Data, Better Decisions: Quality of Information in Human Resource Planning. SSRN Electronic Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.945963

Bowblis, J. (2011). Staffing Ratios and Quality: An Analysis of Minimum Direct Care Staffing Requirements for Nursing Homes. Health Services Research, 46(5), 1495-1516. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2011.01274.x

Codispoti, C. (2015). How to Reduce Hospital Labor Costs by Using an EDW and Analytics. Health Catalyst. Retrieved 7 July 2016, from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/success_stories/texas-childrens-hospital-using-a-healthcare-enterprise-data-warehouse-and-analytics-to-reduce-labor-costs

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