Home infusion company increases productivity by 60% and simplifies scheduling

By utilizing ShiftWizard™ for staff scheduling, this nonprofit consortium was able to leave behind outdated systems and elevate their organization

About the Customer

A New England-based home infusion, nonprofit healthcare consortium with over 60 partner hospitals.

By providing this healthcare system with a modernized, streamlined scheduling solution, completed with minimal downtime, ShiftWizard was able to elevate scheduling and improve productivity in a quick and easy transition.

“Our technical support was unbelievable,” said Brian Treptow, Chief Information Officer. “And super easy to work with on getting things done… One of the tougher things when working with some companies [is] trying to work with their interface teams on getting stuff going... [ShiftWizard] was an absolute pleasure to work on getting all of those up and running. They all worked perfectly, and they all worked quickly.

Challenge

New England Life Care, a home infusion company, partnering with over 60 hospitals, sought a new way of scheduling when their outdated, handwritten system became too cumbersome and complicated.

Home infusion companies play a particular and unique role within the healthcare realm. Not only do they receive prescriptions directly from prescribers, but they also deliver those drugs to the patient’s home, where a scheduled nurse helps to administer and assist with the infusion. Because of the nature of home infusion, New England Life Care needed a way to simplify scheduling and better plan their nurses’ travel routes.

“We get referrals all across the New England states, and then we have nurses that live across these states and they each have a home branch in one of our main cities,” explained Brian Treptow, Chief Information Officer. “But in terms of scheduling these nurses, basically, it’s a matter of who’s going to be on what shift. We have weekends, evenings, on-call, and triage services – so a couple of different kinds shifts, and different durations of shifts and we needed the ability to easily schedule them all.”

Solution

After deciding to automate its scheduling process withShiftWizard, this home infusion organization quickly began to see the positive ripple effects.

From their in-home nurses to their hospital liaisons, ShiftWizard helped elevate scheduling for this entire company, where there were multiple shift options, varying shift durations, and an extensive range of physical locations.

By utilizing the data ShiftWizard provided, New England Life Care increased productivity by 60% and created a new level of transparency across the company.

“I needed something else in which I could get that data in from the interface with ADP and get the data out into analytics and feed it into Alaya Care to know who’s available,” Treptow explained. “As well as being able to take the data to our online and mobile calendar, so they can see where everyone is working and who’s on call.”

Treptow also explained how prior to ShiftWizard, nurses would receive their schedules the night before, which left room for errors and created added confusion.

“Now we are planning a full two months out on their shifts,” he said. “So, they can plan around everything and get all their PTO scheduled… For us [this switch] was about accuracy and timing. All the automated interfaces got rid of a lot of errors, and it’s a lot easier to make changes on the fly.”

Results

By making the switch from handwritten, day-to-day scheduling to ShiftWizard’s automated, user-friendly system, this home infusion company has been able to increase productivity, elevate scheduling, and better support staff.

“All of the nurses love it,” said Treptow, “It’s super, super easy to use… Our focus is always to keep our nurses on patient care and not having them worry about technology.”

Making the transition to ShiftWizard was quick and easy, involving minimal downtime and next-level customer support.

“One of the things you get used to in the healthcare space, many vendors are behind the times, and they don’t care, and in the home infusion space you have that, and you also get used to a lot more outages, because these vendors are not very big. That’s one thing I didn’t have to worry about,” said Treptow.

“That’s one of the tougher things when working with some companies,” he said. “Trying to work with their interface teams on getting stuff going, and it’s back and forth, and you wait ten weeks between things; if you get a bug you wait for six weeks. [ShiftWizard] was an absolute pleasure to work on getting all of those up and running. They all worked perfectly, and they all worked quickly.”

The Positive Ripple Effects

MET THE SPECIFIC NEEDS:

“Being able to have the interoperability that you guys have was really the key piece. Most of the core scheduling you have is fairly straightforward, and that's why we were able to get up and running so quickly,” Treptow explained. “It’s very easy to use, matches the nature of our business, and I can get the data in and out and connect with other systems, which is really a big deal.”

SATISFIED STAFF:

“All of the nurses love it, which is why we keep having additional teams go in and add
it to their process,” Treptow said. “Everyone has loved it, it’s easy to use, the phone app is easy to use, and [I love] the fact that I can feed the schedules and data elsewhere and make it available everywhere.”

WELCOMED CHANGE:

“We had high resistance to change, and this is part of getting people used
to the fluidity of change,” said Treptow. “By having this come in, having it work well, having it be mobile, and having people see the value … This was part of one of the earlier steps in that because I knew it was a slam dunk to work on building a sense of change and getting used to it and absorbing it.”