Hospitals and healthcare systems are under more pressure and scrutiny than ever before. Those in the industry are all too familiar with the inherent profit-versus-care conundrum that healthcare professionals face on a daily basis. How can you control costs, deliver superior care, drive new revenue opportunities and achieve a profitable existence when these factors tend to be diametrically opposed to one another? As the industry continues to move toward a “pay for outcomes” model, hospital administrators will be increasingly challenged to find creative ways to save money and maintain quality care. One area managers have been able to find a balance is in reducing costs related to overtime and temporary staffing.
Consider the following statement from the Healthcare Insights White Paper in 2014:
“Total labor expense can exceed 50 percent of a hospital’s operating costs and 90 percent of its variable costs. Over half of the nearly $3 trillion spent annually on healthcare in the United States is attributable to wages for healthcare workers.”
With so much of the fragile hospital profit margin relying on effective management of full-time and part-time staffing, it’s little wonder why so much emphasis is placed on taking control of overtime and creating optimum time management processes. RINGO exists to fill the gap between the known and unknown and provide a window into the temp staffing spend from travelers to locum tenens.
Many hospitals work with one or several providers to facilitate talent acquisition so preventing an interruption in the relationship is crucial to our success. RINGO is a vendor neutral management system that allows HR or your Contract Labor Coordinator to maintain his/her primary relationships. The RINGO platform is easy to implement and facilitates several core internal processes such as timesheet management and credentialing notifications while providing a full window into your entire labor spend.
Analytics are at the core of what RINGO provides and every stakeholder in the process is considered. The data from RINGO help nurse managers track full-time equivalents (FTE’s) and know who is properly or improperly credentialed to ensure compliance with the Joint Commission. This view of compliance ensures that you are running a top tier team, which relates directly to a hospital’s mission of quality patient care. Another side benefit to automating your temporary staffing process and timesheet collection is the ability to spot potential cost overruns before they spin out of control. Furthermore, clients have the choice to utilize a consolidate billing invoice for clearer, more transparent reporting to the hospital budget office or chief financial officer.
While many vendor management systems require a great deal of training and onboarding time, RINGO can be easily implemented in several weeks. Our platform is able to integrate into most of the top enterprise management systems such as Peoplesoft and Lawson. All of which means you’re closer than you think to implement a robust temporary staffing management system that will allow you to keep your vendors in place, manage overtime spend and provide clear reporting without sacrificing valuable training time or - most importantly - patient care.