The long-term care industry is in the throes of a perfect storm: a persistent labor shortage, escalating costs, and tightening regulations. These challenges facing the long-term care (particularly skilled nursing) industry show few signs of easing and will continue to be the reality for the near future.
The new Federal Nursing Home Staffing Rule – which increased PPD staffing requirements nationwide – and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) increasing penalties for non-compliance have added further pressure. Industry analysts and Washington insiders are doubtful that either of these new staffing rules will be erased politically in the near term.
While there’s no silver bullet, a strategic approach to workforce management is essential for survival and success. This includes implementing solutions that will help long-term care (LTC) facilities streamline their current staffing operations to maximize efficiency, reduce overtime, maintain compliance and provide exceptional care to their residents. But to get there, it is easiest to start with one of the biggest challenges — scheduling.
It Starts with Scheduling…
At the heart of effective staffing lies efficient scheduling. Too often, skilled nursing facilities (SNF) operators see scheduling as a repetitive, administrative task, removed from the critical business operations of the facility. With labor accounting for 80% or more of operating costs — and non-compliance being an expensive error — the reality is that careful, deliberate employee scheduling with an eye towards reducing costly overtime and agency usage is an essential function.
Employee scheduling is more than just filling shifts; it’s about optimizing labor resources, minimizing costs, and ensuring compliance. Traditional scheduling methods often fall short in meeting the complex demands of long-term care. Employee scheduling for skilled nursing and long-term care is complex, requiring facilities to make sure they have enough staff on hand for patient acuity needs and to stay in compliance with regulatory staffing minimums. With this level of specialization and focus on the post-acute industry, it’s important to use a scheduling platform that has features that can handle the unique staffing burdens on LTC facilities, such as:
- Automatically create and adjust employee schedules to PPD requirements and prevent overtime and understaffing
- Fill open shifts and callouts with a few clicks
- Monitor, control and prevent early and late punches and other schedule deviations
- Contain rising labor costs, agency usage, and make better workforce decisions with real-time reporting and analytics
- Empower employees to manage schedules on-the-go and 24/7 from mobile app
- Easily schedule employees across multiple facilities and automate shift differentials from punch to timecard
Beyond Scheduling: A Comprehensive Workforce Platform
But it doesn’t stop with scheduling; effective workforce management for senior care extends beyond scheduling, to using a fully, integrated workforce platform that includes time and attendance, payroll, compliance reporting, and more. But the good news is that by starting with an advanced, SNF-specific scheduling platform, LTC facilities will already have their employee data ready to fulfill other workforce management and human capital requirements.
Accurate Time & Attendance Tracking: Accurate time tracking integrated with scheduling is crucial for payroll accuracy and speed, labor cost control, and it helps to reduce errors and ensure compliance. It also helps to track employee attendance across the entire enterprise and at the facility level. And employees can benefit from accurate schedules, efficient time-off requests, and transparent time tracking, leading to increased satisfaction.
Payroll Based Journal (PBJ) Reporting: Complying with PBJ reporting requirements is a complex task. By using a PBJ system that integrates with your time and attendance tracking and scheduling, you can automatically pull in employee data to simplify the PBJ reporting process, saving time and reducing the risk of errors.
Mobile Shift Management: Mobile shift management integrated with a scheduling platform empowers employees and streamlines operations. It allows your employees to gain real-time access to schedules, easily swap shifts, request time off, and view earnings, receive alerts for open shifts and more via a mobile app. Additionally, managers can benefit from increased visibility into staffing needs, real-time shift coverage updates, and efficient communication.
CMS 5-Star Predictor: Combining workforce data analytics and a CMS 5-Star Predictor, can help you to project the necessary staffing changes needed to achieve your desired Five-Star Ratings and make those changes using your scheduling tool. It also can help you compare past, present, and projected staffing levels against CMS requirements.
Payroll: Integrating payroll with scheduling unlocks a wealth of benefits including automatically populating payroll data from approved schedules and timecards and automating tax calculations, deductions, and filings, freeing up HR staff to focus on more strategic initiatives.
Consider a Purpose-Built Solution for Your Senior Care Enterprise
With the challenging labor market and increasing regulatory measures, LTC and SNF operators need every advantage they can get. A single workforce management system, built around a powerful scheduling platform that includes payroll, PBJ reporting, time & attendance, and more, can help senior care organizations overcome staffing and compliance challenges to gain a competitive edge.
Smartlinx is committed to partnering with facilities to build a stronger, more resilient workforce. Request a demo today to discover how we can help you position your organization for success.
