In this way, the nursing department uses productivity information to show the need for more staffing to manage a specific situation or patient population, and CIOs use productivity information to affect bottom-line profitability. Thus, information ensures that the needs of both nursing and finance are met. The whole process of budgeting, staffing and productivity analysis is more dynamic, allowing changes to be managed proactively rather than reactively. Additionally, an organization can compare data with other hospitals to review the number of patient care days per year and staff hours per year. Future planning will be more successful the more organizations collect historical information.
Hospitals can easily evaluate and then forecast trends based on historical performance.
Being able to project volumes makes it much easier to manage a variety of staffing situations proactively. When analysis capabilities become more sophisticated, organizations can accommodate rapidly changing patient volumes without much effort. This leads to improved productivity and better care. The following is a simplified process for using productivity benchmarks to help control ever-rising labor costs. The data comes from observing hundreds of health care organizations grappling with the same issues.