In today’s health­care world of ACO’s, Val­ue Based health­care and LEAN man­age­ment sys­tem the EVS depart­ment has a real strate­gic oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute EVS staffing exper­tise that may save your med­ical cen­ter or facil­i­ty thou­sands.

The first of three pos­si­ble staffing oppor­tu­ni­ties in Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Depart­ments is Cen­sus Based Staffing.

Cen­sus Based Staffing is the process of adjust­ing your labor hours in real time as the inpa­tient cen­sus fluc­tu­ates on each unit. The def­i­n­i­tion may sound sim­ple, yet the prac­tice is actu­al­ly not so sim­ple. Four char­ac­ter­is­tics of a suc­cess­ful cen­sus based staffing plan include:

1. Cap­ture Vacant Rooms- A good cen­sus based staffing sys­tem sub­tracts appro­pri­ate labor time for vacant rooms that will not need dai­ly clean­ing. So if an EVS Aide is nor­mal­ly assigned 20 dai­ly clean­ings rooms at 20 min­utes each when their unit is full then on a day when there are 6 vacant rooms, then 120 min­utes is sub­tract­ed from the work assign­ment and either used to com­plete dis­charges, ser­vice oth­er areas or com­plete peri­od­ic project work. The plan for these staffing adjust­ments can occur each morn­ing using the mid­night cen­sus.
2. Notice Pend­ing Dis­charges- A good cen­sus based staffing sys­tem includes a method­ol­o­gy to con­firm pend­ing dis­charges ear­ly in the morn­ing so that those patients who are pro­ject­ed to be dis­charged receive only a warm greet­ing and “room polic­ing” vs. the full dai­ly clean­ing. This can save up to 75% of the pro­ject­ed dai­ly ser­vice time for pend­ing dis­charges. So, for exam­ple, if a patient unit is expect­ing 3 dis­charges, and the employ­ee needs 25% of the ser­vice time to check the room before the dis­charge occurs, the employ­ee assign­ment would be reduced by one hour and fif­teen min­utes if dai­ly cleans requires 20 min­utes each.  Those 75 min­utes can be used to ser­vice about 2 dis­charges lat­er in the day. Addi­tion­al­ly, if a day shift super­vi­sor is alert­ed that the pend­ing dis­charges for the day may exceed the dis­charge capac­i­ty, they can arrange addi­tion­al sup­port for the PM shift.
3. Adapt Team Based Staffing – “Team based staffing” occurs when the entire day shift views the process of serv­ing occu­pied patient rooms as a “team project” to be accom­plished by a spec­i­fied time of the day by every­one on the team regard­less of where the occu­pied rooms are locat­ed. This men­tal­ly helps super­vi­sors because Aides become used to mov­ing off their “assigned unit” when need­ed to help ser­vice busier units, com­plete dis­charge rooms or per­form project work else­where when their nor­mal unit is not busy. EVS lead­ers who suc­cess­ful­ly build this cul­ture of adapt­abil­i­ty also build a sol­id team envi­ron­ment as each staff mem­ber appre­ci­ates that they will receive help when need­ed and they will give help when they are able.

Include Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Doc­u­men­ta­tion- A good cen­sus based staffing sys­tem doc­u­ments pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for each staff mem­ber as well as the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by nurs­ing unit so that the depart­ment can  rec­og­nize and dupli­cate the prac­tices of the best per­form­ing staff mem­bers and units as well as take cor­rec­tive action to remove any pro­duc­tiv­i­ty bar­ri­ers. If mul­ti­ple staff mem­bers, i.e. a full time Aide and the relief Aides work­ing on a par­tic­u­lar unit all have low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the issues may be relat­ed to room strip­ping process­es or the amount of equip­ment used in the patient rooms. Of course the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty results must be bal­anced with qual­i­ty expec­ta­tions so that estab­lished qual­i­ty out­comes are always met.

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of this arti­cle!

For more infor­ma­tion on soft­ware sys­tems to help you with Cen­sus Based Staffing, Inva­sive Care Case Response Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or Col­lec­tions Ser­vices Man­age­ment vis­it www.smartfacilitysoftware.com

Cindy E. Paget has worked in health­care since 1986, pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship devel­op­ment and con­sult­ing for Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices and Human Resources. Cindy is a mem­ber of AHE, is both CHESP and SPHR cer­ti­fied and serves as a con­ven­tion speak­er and writer for health­care lead­er­ship learn­ing events. Cindy holds a dual degree BS in Busi­ness Administration/Information Sys­tems and an MA in Orga­ni­za­tion­al Lead­er­ship and lives in Sequim, WA.