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Workday and ShiftWizard Come Together to Serve an Entire Healthcare System

November 1, 2023
November 1, 2023

From nurses to leadership, employees of the Northeast Georgia Health System have streamlined their processes and improved scheduling 

About the Customer

Northeast Georgia Health System serves roughly 2 million patients across 26 counties in the northeast region of Georgia. With five acute hospitals, close to 100 ambulatory locations, a number of post-acute facilities, over 700 beds, more than 1,300 medical staff, specializing in over 50 areas, and over 10,000 employees, this healthcare system struggled with various scheduling tools and sought a cohesive, universal solution that would streamline scheduling and easily integrate with their time and attendance and payroll system, Workday. 

 

Address Future Challenges_PChallenge

With various departments utilizing their own scheduling systems and practices, this healthcare system sought a solution that served their staff, management, and leadership that could also scale as they continued to grow.  

“When we really started looking at staff scheduling, what we found is that we had a tool that was very sophisticated for payroll and time and attendance, but not very well catered towards the end users, the managers, the individuals that were filling shifts,” said Chris Paravate, Chief Information Officer at Northeast Georgia Health System. “We had this collage of different tools — everything from using texting alerts to emails to Google tools — all kinds of pieces cobbled together to address staffing needs.” 

Nine years ago, Northeast Georgia Health System had a single hospital and a few hundred employed physicians, currently, they have five hospitals and over 700 employed physicians.  

“Historically, there were pockets of individuals that managed staffing, but no one ever looked at the big picture,” said Paravate. “What we really found was that no one really had a good handle on scheduling and the tools we had historically were not very user-centric, they were hard to navigate, it was clear they had limited functionality, and they weren't designed with the idea of staff people engaging in it.”

Competency_YSolution

This healthcare system began looking for a new solution with specific criteria. Leadership wanted a scheduling system that would give them enterprise analytics, help make better informed, more effective staffing decisions and streamline and unify the individual departments across their entire organization. 

“The integration with Workday and with time and attendance with Workday was paramount,” said Paravate. “Historically, we had a scheduling system, a time and attendance system, and a payroll system and while they worked well together, they were incredibly complex to support … Part of our overall Workday implementation was to flatten that architecture. For example, a nurse manager can approve time, pay a requisition, and order supplies from their phone wherever they are.” 

They also brought their nurse leaders into the discussion and selection process, to help support the transition and select a system that would serve the end-user, leadership and management. 

“Nursing felt somewhat trapped by the set of tools they had and a lot of time those tools were introduced by HR or finance or by payroll and they were selected and implemented through the lens of those areas,” said Paravate. “So, as we engaged with nursing and started to pull them into the system selection process, they really felt a part of coming up with a solution that was much more focused on their needs rather than what people perceived their needs to be.”

 

Improve_CResults

In October of 2022, Northeast Georgia made the change to ShiftWizard, integrating with Workday, to streamline their scheduling and elevate their payroll, simplify time and attendance, and improve communication. 

“We had a really good collaboration between the Workday team and the ShiftWizard team,” said Paravate. “Six weeks after our initial go-live, we did a site visit for another health system and you just think ‘six weeks after our go-live we can sit and talk about this’ really speaks volumes to how fast we got past that initial go-live surge, and really stabilized out.” 

This healthcare system has been utilizing this unique integration to track metrics, looking closely at how shifts are filled and if they’re being filled in the most effective manner. They’ve also been able to take a closer look at their turnover and agency use. 

“We are seeing that our turnover rates are going down and the amount of agency staff is coming down,” said Paravate. “What I can tell you is that we’ve streamlined that process. We've gotten it so tight and so consistent … Whether it's a staff member signing up for scheduling shifts or the manager, we've taken all the friction we can out of that workflow.”

THE POSITIVE RIPPLE EFFECTS: 

  • HEALTHCARE SPECIFIC SOLUTION — “Healthcare is a dynamic space and frankly staffing a hospital, let alone an entire healthcare system, can be like managing an entire city,” explained Paravate. “Each part of that community has different needs; has different challenges, and so we really did want a healthcare-designed solution that was focused on the dynamics of those needs and would also integrate well into our time and attendance and ultimately Workday. And so, for that to be cohesive and simple, whether you were a staff member, manager, or director.” 
  • IMPROVED RETENTION AND RECRUITMENT — “Our clinicians have choices,” Paravate said. “They can work somewhere else. So a lot of times that scheduling experience, that onboarding experience; simple things like training and delivery, and the architecture of tools — those everyday things can either be a source of frustration or they can [have staff say], ‘gosh, this is so easy, it's so easy for me to pick up a shift here, or engage with my manager and address things that come up’ and that was really a big piece in our selection, the integration with Workday.”
  • A LONG-TERM PARTNERSHIP — “I think Shift Wizard is definitely part of our long-term architecture,” said Paravate. “We take our partnership with ShiftWizard and Workday very seriously … Healthcare is changing rapidly, we are changing rapidly, and we want to continue to stay connected because we think it's the right platform, with the right capability, the right level of integration. We think it's simple, we think it’s scalable; we want to be a part of that innovation.”