Managing Staff

Management for any healthcare facility has many different roles that they must complete. A health care manager must be able to handle running the daily operations, complete any financial duties, and also manage the employees of the facility. When it comes to keeping the facility properly staffed management must be aware of what is needed. To be sure that the facility is properly staffed, a health care manager should utilize a staffing plan. A staffing plan can show where employees are needed to work any hours that the facility needs.

Annualizing is also important because if a facility is to be run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week will require many staff members because one employee would not be able to fill all of the positions. In understanding any staffing needs for a facility the manager must take into consideration productive and non-productive time. Productive time means the time spent that is actually worked by an employee. Non-productive time would mean any time the employee is not at work; whether it is the weekend, a holiday, sick time, vacation time, or a personal day.

When it comes to using a staffing plan it is important for the manager to have this information in place because it will help to show what actual hours need to be covered and how many employees it will take to cover those hours. There are two ways to do a staffing plan; they are either done in the annualized method or by the scheduled-position method. In the annualized method the manager would take the non-productive and productive days of each staff person and account for them in the formula that is used to fill the hours.

In the scheduled-position method the non-productive and productive days are accounted for when filling a scheduled shift. This is why recording non-productive and productive days in a staffing plan are necessary because all of the hours of each staff member are accounted for. When it comes to the cost for any healthcare facility they can be tied to the staffing in a variety of ways. In a staffing plan the costs are attributed to the amount of staff that is needed to cover the hours that are needed to run the facility.

It also can be attributed to the pay rates of each individual staff member and also the benefits that each staff member is entitled to. This information can be kept in the books which will help in preparing a budget or a staffing plan. If a health care manager did not have access to this information they would not have the correct information that is needed to properly staff and run the facility on a day-to-day basis. A healthcare facility is run by a staff that must provide care to its patients, provide daily care, and handle administrative duties.

Without proper staffing a facility cannot be run properly and the quality of care that the patients receive will suffer which in turn can affect the overall reputation of the facility. To ensure that this does not happen, management must have quality staff members and also to make sure that all of the hours are properly covered. Reference Bureau of Labor Statistics. (January 2012). Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved from http://www. bls. gov/oco/ocos014. htm