Per-Se Technologies • Hospital Services
Rush University Medical Center Achieves
Greater Productivity with ANSOS One-Staff®
Staff salaries represent healthcare’s
largest expenditure, often accounting for
more than 50% of an organization’s overall budget. As a result, effectively controlling costs often comes down to how well
an organization manages its resources.
At Rush University Medical Center, this
means ensuring it has the optimal number
and type of skilled, qualified nurses on
staff for more than 40 different departments. To make these decisions, Rush
relies on the data it gathers through
ANSOS One-Staff®, an enterprise-wide
labor cost management and staff scheduling solution from Per-Se Technologies.
By allowing Rush to access up-to-date
records of its nursing expenditures, this
solution facilitates a data-driven decision
making process that leads to timely,
profitable staffing decisions.
Improving employee satisfaction
Rush University Medical Center is an
830-bed academic medical center located
in Chicago. As a recognized leader in
clinical research and patient care, one of
Rush’s missions is to foster the individual
growth and satisfaction of its employees.
This, in turn, helps the organization to
retain top talent and improve the delivery
of care to its patients.
To that end, Rush implemented ANSOS
One-Staff in June 1997 to automate and
improve the staff scheduling process in
its surgical patient care and women’s &
children’s units. This automation allowed
Rush to create fair and equitable schedules
and reduce nurse turnover by preventing
ductivity level of each nursing unit and
realize tremendous efficiency gains.
“ANSOS One-Staff is a productivity
system—the scheduling piece is just the
cherry on the sundae,” says Weissman.
“ANSOS One-Staff is a
productivity system—the
scheduling piece is just the
cherry on the sundae,” says
Connie Weissman, CPA, BS,
systems support analyst at Rush
University Medical Center.
the burnout that often occurs when units
are understaffed or when nurses must
work overtime. The system also enhanced
Rush’s ability to accommodate employee
preferences, which helped to improve
overall staff satisfaction and retention.
After a hospital reorganization in 1999,
Rush expanded its use of ANSOS
One-Staff throughout the enterprise.
Today, more than 40 departments use the
system, which its staff members “live and
die by,” says Connie Weissman, CPA, BS,
systems support analyst, Rush University
Medical Center.
Reaping financial rewards
Through its successful use of ANSOS
One-Staff, Rush can easily track the pro-
In addition to driving greater efficiencies in
staff productivity and eliminating the need
for costly paper-based processes, ANSOS
O n e-Staff also helps Rush to meet its
budget targets by identifying the type of
employees, skill sets and salaries required
for each division. With routine and customized management re p o rts that include
objective performance appraisal data, Rush
can also better manage overtime and float
utilization for maximum profitability.
Together, these capabilities allow management to optimize staff resources, analyze
past spending patterns and assess its
progress toward current budget targets.
“If we had 50 patients when we expected
40, the system helps us to see that we
should be over budget and allows us to
reforecast accordingly,” Weissman added.
At the end of each fiscal year, Rush uses
reports from ANSOS One-Staff to support
budgeting processes and promote
smarter business decisions. Each
manager receives a detailed set
of utilization re p o rts that allow
Rush to track everything
from overtime to float
utilization and identify
trends that will
impact the
next year’s
budget.
Early benefits of automation
After implementing ANSOS One-Staff,
Rush realized immediate benefits at the
unit level. Charge nurses no longer had to
call in daily staffing reports or manually
report census data. Even better, the system brought consistency to the decentralized staff scheduling process, resulting in
standardized scheduling start dates
across the hospital and making it easier to
utilize nurses from the central float pool.
“We saw a great deal of benefits right
from the very beginning,” says Weissman.
Previously, the nursing units used a variety
of paper-based or spreadsheet systems,
which made it difficult to quickly and efficiently react to changes in nurse demand.
Now, with access to a centralized
employee database, users have all of the
information they need to quickly deploy
staff resources right at their fingertips.
Enabling better position control
Having access to the employee data
stored in ANSOS One-Staff has allowed
Rush to make great strides in position
control. Through daily staff management
reports and system-generated snapshots
from the end of each pay period, management has all of the data it needs to
proactively respond to staffing issues
and keep a tight rein on additions to its
full-time nursing staff. “ANSOS One-Staff
helps you wrap your hands around posi-
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tion control, giving the information you
need to put the necessary procedures
and policies in place,” says Weissman.
By reallocating nurses to the right place at
the right time, Rush is also able to control
costs and dramatically improve the delivery of care to its patients. “It’s been a
process of rediscovery. We had an idea
of how we spent our time and money in
the past, but those perceptions have
changed substantially with ANSOS
One-Staff,” says Weissman.
Enterprise-wide staff scheduling and
productivity management
For Rush, staff scheduling is now a much
more streamlined process than it was in
the past. While it used to take an entire
day for some units to complete a schedule, the ANSOS One-Staff system enables
nursing units to create staff schedules in
just a fraction of the time. The automation
has also enhanced Rush’s ability to generate schedules that accommodate individual preferences and skill sets.
Managing employee data
Rush’s use of ANSOS One-Staff has
extended the value of its existing information systems, namely through the
development of interfaces between the
organization’s time and attendance system,
hospital information system and ANSOS
© Copyright 2005, Per-Se Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Per-Se Technologies is a registered trademark of Per-Se
Technologies, Inc. ANSOS and One-Staff are registered
trademarks of PST Products, LLC d/b/a Per-Se Technologies.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
One-Staff. These interfaces have added
value to day-to-day processes, especially
the time and attendance interface which
allows users to create and view calendars
for each employee detailing occurre n c e s
of paid time off, tardiness, rotation, orientation and training. Staff can also use this
information to praise employees during
annual reviews or to counsel them on
a reas for improvement. This seamless
flow of information provides a level of
functionality that was previously unavailable and strengthens communications
between the nursing units and
upper management.
Your partner for maximum profitability
If you are looking to improve your enterprise’s productivity for greater financial
results, Per-Se Technologies has the
experience to help you realize your goals.
Every day, we support 47,000 physicians
and more than 2,000 healthcare organizations worldwide with innovative business
and technology solutions; therefore, we
have the experience to help your enterprise reach its financial goals. For more
information on how ANSOS One-Staff or
any of our other integrated solutions can
help you increase your income potential,
call us at 877/73PER-SE or visit our
Website at www.per-se.com.