Case Study: Hospital Staff Scheduling Software – A Remedy for Scheduling Pain

A popular proverb states, “If you give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach a man how to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime.” The same emphasis on skills and proper tools are what ensure long term success in the business world. For Miles Carver, Manager of Invasive Cardiac Services at CVPH, his expertise in creating schedules at a hospital in Madison with the help of Snap Schedule made his subsequent work at CVPH much easier. After discovering Snap Schedule at his previous job, Miles knew that Snap Schedule would once again be the perfect tool to help him with hospital staff scheduling at his new job in Plattsburgh.

Taking Snap Schedule to Miles’ next job was a no brainer. Snap Schedule just makes schedules so incredibly easy to see and manage, and most hospitals don’t really have a scheduling system. “Before I found Snap Schedule, I was struggling with creating employee schedules manually for many, many years. It was an absolute pain.” said Miles.

After struggling with manual scheduling for some time Miles started researching employee scheduling software, and found that Snap Schedule was the top rated hit. He also looked into other hospital staff scheduling programs, downloaded several of them to test and found that Snap Schedule was the most feature rich and intuitive. “I bet I could teach a third grader to use it.”

The lack of automation when doing scheduling manually can be time consuming and leaves room for error. Like so many others, Miles downloaded templates for Microsoft Word from their website, hoping that they would simplify scheduling, but realized that he had to repeatedly input information and that it wasn’t much help at all. Snap Schedule eliminates all the frustrations of manual scheduling. “My staff typically work the same shifts, and I have only 2 part time staff members, so with Snap Schedule I can either cut and paste week by week, or month by month, or I can auto-generate the schedules. It’s very simple, and way more efficient than manually scheduling.”

Miles had to schedule employees in multiple locations at both of his jobs, which Snap Schedule handled efficiently. There are several different labs that employees are scheduled to work at, and some staff have their home location set as one lab, whereas other employees may be assigned to work in multiple lab areas. “At a glance Snap Schedule’s outlook view shows me which employees I have scheduled in what department, who is on call, who I have scheduled to work a particular shift and what time, and any tasks or to-dos I have to assign. Snap Schedule is great.”

Snap Schedule’s extensive capabilities and versatile reporting features ensure that any scheduling challenge will be met and solved. Miles’ current workplace in Plattsburgh is a union hospital. There are many new guidelines as to what time staff can have off, various seniority rules, etc. that Miles has to take into consideration. With Snap Schedule he can input all those rules into the system and have the software automatically keep track of all the necessary information. “Let’s say I have two people call in sick- I can adjust the schedule knowing that Snap Schedule will ensure that my schedule complies with union rules and I don’t have to worry about paper files.”

Snap Schedule is designed with hospital staff scheduling needs in mind, right down to the very last detail. Miles finds it extremely helpful that Snap Schedule has a feature that allows him to define skills and keep track of employee’s training and certifications. “Snap Schedule keeps track of when they expire or need to be renewed and it alert me beforehand.” It also allows him to add relevant notes to shift assignments that he will see when he mouses over a specific shift on the schedule. The e-mail feature makes it easy for him to send each staff member their work schedule.

“I can create a schedule for the entire month in less than an hour. It cut down the amount of time I used to spend working on schedules significantly. Snap Schedule made my work at both jobs phenomenally easy.”