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Hospitals Across Florida Save As Nurses Go Online to Set Up Their Work Schedules

Once a month, Gwenn Black sits down at her home computer in Rockledge and schedules her work hours.

A “float nurse” for the Brevard County hospital system Health First, she works most of her shifts at Palm Bay Community Hospital, with an occasional stint at Holmes Regional in Melbourne.

Black, 23, blocks her 12-hour work shifts so they fall on the same days her husband works. “The flexibility is so great for us,” said Black, whose husband is an Orlando firefighter. “I can work the same days he does, and take vacation the same days he does. It’s the best job in the world for me.”

It wasn’t always so easy for Health First’s per diem nurses, who used to have to request which days they didn’t want to work, and then hope they would be accommodated when the schedule was posted.

Health First is among a growing number of hospitals using Web-based scheduling systems for their nurses and other shift employees. At least 300 hospitals across the country are using them, and hundreds more are likely to start within the next year or two.

Those in Florida include Shands at the University of Florida, Lee Memorial Health in Tampa, Munroe Regional in Ocala, Health Central in Ocoee, and Lakeland Regional. St. Vincent’s Health Care in Jacksonville started Internet scheduling just last month, while Florida Hospital is currently testing it at three of its Orlando-area campuses: Florida Hospital Altamonte, Florida Hospital East Orlando and Winter Park Memorial.

The idea of using a secure Web site for complex work-shift needs isn’t new. Airlines have long used it to schedule their pilots, for example. But the health-care industry began experimenting with it only in the past six to seven years, and on a limited basis.

Concerro Inc., until recently known as BidShift, claims to be the first software company “to manage shifts online.” It started in two hospitals in 2003, jumped to 20 in 2004 and has seen exponential increases thereafter: 70 hospitals in 2006, 165 hospitals in 2007, and a projected 230 to 250 hospitals by the end of 2008.

Concerro’s main competitor, giant McKesson Corp., has two Web-scheduling products that compete with Concerro’s. It reports that in the past two years it has signed 119 contracts, many of them with multiple-hospital systems.

Jan McCoy, vice president of patient-care services at Health First’s Cape Canaveral Hospital, predicted the concept will continue to spread quickly.

“It’s been one of those no-brainers. It’s simple to use, and it’s Web-based so it can be accessed from anywhere,” said McCoy, who estimated the three-hospital Health First system has already saved $1.6 million since the Concerro software system went active a year ago.

One of the biggest benefits of the Internet-scheduling system, both in money saved and quality of service, has been a sharp reduction in the hospitals’ use of outside, or “agency,” nurses, McCoy said.

The new ease of scheduling her hospital’s full-time, part-time and per-diem nurses has meant they have been able to fill virtually every open shift. "The [scheduling] system before was almost what I’d call ‘crisis scheduling,’ " she said.

It works so well for nurses, McCoy said, that it has been expanded to shift workers in other departments such as respiratory therapy, radiology and environmental services.

Glenn Fechtenburg, nursing administrator at Health Central, said the McKesson software program that went into service a year ago has virtually ended the “begging and bartering” that used to be part of the scheduling process. The workload for managers has gone down, while nurses’ morale has gone up.

Now, full- and part-time nurses go online to sign up for their shifts, then the per-diem nurses get to sign up for what’s left. The per-diems “can see the [scheduling] holes and take them,” he said. “If there’s an available shift and they’re qualified for it, it’s instantaneous.”