Intersection of Excellence: API Healthcare & Ellis Medicine How Real-Time Information is Advancing Ellis Medicine’s Workforce and Integration

All told, Ellis Medicine employs over 3,400 staff. Like Ellis Medicine, many healthcare organizations are integrating to become “one.” However, Ellis Medicine realized that integration needs to move beyond a common name to realize true returns. The challenge often lies in integrating people, processes, operations and culture. When the leaders of the new system had to make a bet on solutions to aid their system-wide workforce integration, they turned to API Healthcare.

Staff Satisfaction and Schedules–Translating to Patient Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction drives patient satisfaction—a position long espoused by not only great leaders but also research. According to Joe Giansante, Vice President of Human Resources, the only way to make sure patients are satisfied is to make sure employees are satisfied. A success factor for driving employee satisfaction is empowering employees to gain visibility of their schedule and compensation. Through the partnership with API Healthcare,

Ellis Medicine believes that they have given a much greater sense of control to their staff. Giansante notes, “It’s really about controlling your life. API Healthcare has allowed our employees to make decisions about their life based on real-time data—data beyond their paycheck.” Prior to API Healthcare, many staff, despite earning extra income from working extra shifts, were struggling to balance work and family, and turnover rates were higher than Ellis Medicine expected. Amongst mid-levels for example, they experienced a marked decrease in turnover once they enabled employees to access real-time data, so they could better align their professional and personal life. According to Giansante, “they needed this data to make better decisions—they often didn’t realize just how much they were working.” An unhappy workforce will take a toll on patients.

Overtime challenges affect a vast amount of healthcare organizations. For many, it has become the new normal, but for some, actively managing overtime has yielded positive gains—both financial and otherwise. For example, within six months of deploying API Healthcare, Ellis Medicine reduced their overtime expense

On the surface, Ellis Medicine, a 438 bed community and teaching healthcare system located in New York State, looks just like its peers. It is the product of an integration of Ellis Hospital, former Bellevue Woman’s Hospital, and the former St. Clare’s Hospital.

by 26.7%, totaling nearly $721,622. While these overtime savings are powerful, the benefit extends beyond the Profit and Loss Statement. The strength of API Healthcare lies in “the ability for staff to access their information from any-where, creating trust in the system,” said Paul Milton, President and CEO.

Organizational Benefit, Unit Control

Since partnering with API Healthcare, Ellis Medicine has deployed staff scheduling across many departments, including inpatient nursing, pharmacy and women’s services. With this enterprise approach, they have been able to save millions of dollars in labor, allowing them to fund other mission critical projects. Relative to nursing, with the support of leadership, Ellis was able to quickly reduce nurse agency expense by 50%, and with continued process improvement, they were able at a point in time to reduce agency to nearly zero. But Sara Zappi, Director of Human Resources, warns—that nothing lasts forever as these expenses can creep back up without the right level of transparency, accountability and leadership.

To empower the staff, Ellis Medicine integrated two API Healthcare modules, Time & Attendance and Staffing & Scheduling, with their clinical admissions data to create real-time staffing and admitted patient ratios. This allows managers to make staffing decisions based on real-time

information, enabling better patient care and human resource utilization. As Zappi notes, the managers’ access to this level of real-time, unit specific information has made a marked difference. At the staff level, the transparency and information has had some positive, unintended benefits. Ellis Medicine began to realize that unscheduled absences declined between 20-30%. Zappi believes that the transparency supported a new level of reporting and a new level of accountability amongst team members. While fewer absences certainly help to reduce variations in labor expense, Ellis Medicine believes that the benefit extends beyond the finances to a more collaborative and positive work environment.

In the midst of a highly dynamic healthcare system, organizations are seeking solutions that can deliver tangible results—results that impact clinical, financial and administrative domains. API Healthcare has equipped Ellis Medicine with the capability to continuously improve its most important asset—its people. As recognized by Ellis Medicine, the power of a solution that advances a culture of transparency, accountability and trust is a critical component of not only workforce optimization but the organization’s sustainability.

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Ellis Medicine has been rewarded for participation in this case study and is an active participant in the API Healthcare STAR client reference program that rewards clients for sharing their outcomes, expertise and opinions.