Patent ID: 7587329

Claim:
A method of scheduling a plurality of employees in a health care environment, wherein at least two patients receive treatment during a predetermined time period, said scheduling method comprising: for each patient, evaluating patient care requirements, wherein the patient care requirements correspond to actual employee time requirements necessary to satisfy the patient care requirements; in response to the patient care requirement evaluation, adjusting scheduling time of at least one patient to distribute the corresponding employee time requirements throughout a predetermined time period; automatically scheduling employees in shifts in response to the distributed employee time requirements, wherein automatically scheduling employees comprises: (i) determining in a computer system the employees' patient care capability over intervals of their shift, wherein at least one employee is not capable of performing direct patient care duties for an entire shift; (ii) counting employees at a fractional number based at least upon the employees' training and a predetermined patient care capability resulting in scheduling employees in non-whole number increments; and (iii) rounding up a total amount of employees needed when a determination by a scheduling module results in a fractional number of employees needed to address the needs of the at least two patients; and displaying employee shift information in relation to time to provide a visual indication of scheduled employee information in relation to scheduled patient information.