AtStaff’s Newest ClairVia® Software Closes the Loop on an End-to-End Solution for Filling Staffing Needs from Both Internal and External Sources

ClairVia® eWork Optimizes Safety, Quality and Cost Control of Supplemental Employees Staffing Through Advanced Automation and Integration with External Labor Firms
AONE 2008

Given healthcare organizations’ reliance on supplemental staffing resources, AtStaff today introduces new ClairVia® software, ClairVia® eWork, that facilitates rapid access to external staff while optimizing safety standards, quality and cost control of supplemental employees.

By using ClairVia eWork, healthcare organizations and external labor firms interact together to automate the selection, approval, and deployment of qualified, cost-effective supplemental staff, and coordinate billing. ClairVia eWork puts an end to the manual, tedious and time-consuming process of locating, assessing, hiring and paying for external personnel.

While highly effective as a standalone product, ClairVia eWork integrates with other ClairVia solutions, which optimize safety standards, quality and cost control of all internal staffing resources, to provide a total, end-to-end solution for automating “time to fill” of all staffing needs — whether they’re from internal or external sources.

“Industry trends forecast a continued shortage of full-time employees, particularly in nursing, and research indicates that supplemental staffing is becoming an essential healthcare strategy,” says Beth Pickard, President and Chief Executive Officer at AtStaff. “However, finding qualified, cost-efficient supplemental staff to meet urgent patient care requirements can be highly challenging. ClairVia eWork provides a best-practice, totally automated solution to help healthcare organizations efficiently obtain and manage the highest quality external staff at the lowest cost.

“For our existing ClairVia customers, ClairVia eWork closes the loop in providing total patient demand management,” Pickard says. “It operates in concert with ClairVia® Demand Manager (for continuous demand management and prediction) and ClairVia® Staff Manager (for advanced staff management, allocation and deployment) to deliver a comprehensive ‘decision tree’ for aligning the right internal and supplemental resources.”

Benefits of ClairVia eWork include:
Automated position requisition for prompt access to qualified personnel for manager review
Control over licensure, competencies and experience levels of supplemental personnel
Fast turnaround on candidate selection, approval and deployment
Cost savings through precise invoicing, volume discounts and early payment incentives
Complete vendor management and accurate, consistent contract compliance
Comprehensive tracking, audit control and reporting, resulting in reduced billing errors
Improved accuracy of supplemental staffing expenditures for short- and long-term budgeting
Time savings during reconciliation in comparing invoices to actual worked hours
Improved assessment of labor firm performance and turnaround times
Greater efficiency, convenience and service for hiring and payroll managers

Industry trends and research on supplemental nurse staffing support the use of ClairVia® eWork

Industry trends forecast a continuation of the nursing shortage, and the scarcity of full-time nursing resources will require healthcare organizations to continue to utilize external supplemental staffing.

The 2007 PricewaterhouseCoopers report on “What Works: Healing the Healthcare Staffing Shortage,” suggests that the use of supplemental nurses is no longer a stop-gap measure, but has become an essential component of human resources hospital strategy. Among the 240 hospital executives surveyed across the U.S., on average 5% of the total nursing hours were filled with supplemental nurse staffing, and executives predict this trend will continue in order to sustain operations. The supplemental nurse staffing strategy serves to somewhat offset nursing shortages, resulting in reported nurse vacancy rates of 7-10%.

New evidence in staffing management suggests that the widely held negative perceptions regarding supplemental nurses may be unfounded. Aiken and colleagues (2007) examined the characteristics of supplemental nurses as well as the relationships of the supplemental staff to adverse events and nurse outcomes. Using both national and the state of Pennsylvania RN survey data in 2000, it was estimated that 6% of hospital staff were employed by external staffing firms. The supplemental nurses were equally, if not more highly, educated than the permanent staff, and the supplemental nurses were not associated with a negative impact on quality of care or nurse indicators.

Given hospitals’ continuing need for supplemental staffing and new evidence suggesting a comparable level of care quality provided by supplemental nurses, healthcare organizations can benefit by utilizing a best-practice approach to managing supplemental staffing through ClairVia eWork.

References:

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute (2007). “What Works: Healing the Healthcare Staffing Shortage.” Accessed March 7, 2008: http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid/ 674D1E79A678A0428525730D006B74A9 (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Aiken, L.H., Clarke, S.P., Sloane, D.M., & Xue, Y. (2007). Supplemental nurse staffing in hospitals and quality of care. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 37 (7/8), 335- 342.

About AtStaff & ClairVia® solutions

Healthcare management software systems from AtStaff serve more than 1,200 healthcare organizations, medical facilities, nursing departments and group practices.

AtStaff’s ClairVia® staff and demand management solutions for the hospital enterprise marketplace improve quality of care, patient safety and patient throughput by ensuring that patients receive the exact, clinically appropriate level and amount of staffing care from admission to discharge.

AtStaff markets the following ClairVia solutions:
ClairVia Staff Manager
ClairVia Demand Manager
ClairVia Outcomes-Driven Patient Acuity
ClairVia Caregiver Assignment
ClairVia eWork

More information on AtStaff and its ClairVia solutions is available at www.atstaff.com.

Contacts

AtStaff, Inc.
Stephen Werk, 919-382-8282, ext. 205
swerk {at} atstaff(.)com