Articles and best practices from Time360
January is when many small businesses reset goals, and when last year's messy schedule habits quietly return. Spreadsheets get copied forward with outdated names. Shift preferences live in text threads. PTO requests sit in inboxes. By mid-month, managers are already firefighting…
Read moreIn a busy clinic, an uncovered shift is not an abstract problem: it is a packed waiting room, delayed callbacks, and stressed front-desk and clinical staff. Many practices still fill gaps by calling down a list until someone answers. That works until it does not. Open-shift…
Read moreHospitalist groups juggle continuity of care, night coverage, weekends, and hard-won time off. When the schedule lives in a shared spreadsheet, "fairness" becomes a debate about who last edited cell G14. Fairness does not mean identical schedules. It means transparent rules,…
Read moreCall centers feel staffing mistakes immediately. Too few agents and hold times spike; too many and labor cost climbs with little customer benefit. The schedule is where forecast intuition meets reality. You do not need a perfect forecasting model to improve coverage. You need a…
Read moreSummer brings patios, tourists, graduations, and longer evening turns, and the same crew that was steady in March can tip into burnout by July if the schedule only grows, never breathes. Surge scheduling is less about filling every slot and more about protecting the people who…
Read moreSummer PTO season exposes weak processes. Requests arrive by email, text, sticky note, and hallway conversation. Managers approve from memory. Conflicts surface only after the schedule is published. A calm PTO workflow has three parts: one intake path, visible impact, and a…
Read moreOrganizations with more than one site (clinic campuses, restaurant groups, staffing clients) often discover double-booking the hard way: a trusted employee is on two calendars at once, or overtime appears only after payroll. Multi-location scheduling fails when each site is a…
Read morePhysician staffing companies and large provider groups live on flexibility: core panels, float pools, locums, and multi-site coverage. The schedule is the product clients feel, even when clinical quality is excellent. Flexible coverage works when the calendar makes constraints…
Read moreOvertime is sometimes necessary. Surprise overtime is expensive and demoralizing, especially in medical practices where a few long weeks can blow a labor budget that looked fine on Monday. The fix is earlier visibility, not a lecture after the pay period closes. Set per-person…
Read moreBy mid-autumn, many teams are tired of "final" schedules that change three times before the week starts. Every republish trains staff to ignore the calendar until the last minute, and then everyone scrambles together. Publishing with intent is a leadership habit as much as a…
Read moreResearch has shown that hospitals with low staffing levels compared to industry standards have poorer outcomes (ahrq.gov). You are probably asking yourself - if there is a correlation between staffing levels and patient outcomes why wouldn't hospitals staff accordingly? A couple…
Read moreEvery business manager has to be concerned with scheduling staff. An organization without an effective scheduling process can create tension among employees. Some schedulers have dedicated days or weeks developing and publishing employee schedules. To make matters worse, the…
Read moreI know of a physician who manages staffing for a hospitalist program. He works with fifteen physicians in the program and schedules three months at a time. Physicians are professionals and do not like to be told when they are on the schedule, instead they prefer to participate…
Read moreA ccording to this proposed bill , Congress may require employers to provide more "predictable and stable schedules for employees in certain growing low-wage occupations, and for other purposes". Congress has dubbed the bill the "Schedules That Work Act" and it is designed to…
Read morePer a story in the Montgomery Advertiser, the Central Alabama VA was recently audited by the US Dept. of Veteran's Affairs. The audit was conducted, in part, to investigate the possible use of "paper waiting lists". Records were maintained in an electronic system; however, some…
Read moreNurse.com's blog (http://blog.nurse.com/2014/06/30/nurses-survey-results-show-dangerous-stress-levels/) cites survey results that report nurses working long shifts and facing unrealistic workloads and a lack of sleep. These factors are contributing to high than expected levels…
Read moreImage Source: jasleen_kaur @Flickr.com Hiring for a PRN position is no different than a normal full time or part time position. Typically, PRNs will fill in at multiple sites and do not have standard hours. They may be used to fill minimum staffing requirements when the number…
Read moreImproving continuity of care using Time 360's scheduling feature In our last post we examined Time 360's ability to improve clinical outcomes by matching clinicians' expertise with patients' needs. Today we will look at Time 360's ability to improve outcomes by ensuring…
Read moreHow can an online scheduling tool lead to improved clinical outcomes? I am glad you asked... Delivering quality outcomes is quite difficult and dependent upon many factors. Time 360 helps improve patient outcomes by scheduling the right resources at the right time. For…
Read moreDrag-and-drop Online Scheduling Calendar Welcome back to our blog. In our last post we introduced Time 360 and discussed the many ways it can help make your life easier. Today we are going to demonstrate the simplicity of the Time 360 calendar. Scheduling is traditionally done…
Read moreTime 360 is an online application developed by Cochran Platt Solutions, LLC. Cochran Platt Solutions, LLC was founded by Jason Cochran and Ryan Platt. Jason and Ryan are Information Technology leaders holding MBA degrees. They are passionate about developing innovative…
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