4. Curb incidental
overtime. Lehigh
looked closely at inci-
dental (swiping in 2
minutes early for your
shift kicks you into 0.1
hours of overtime) vs.
prescheduled OT (fill-
ing a Saturday vacan-
cy). When it's known that Wednesday or Friday will be a lighter day,
Dr. Johnson instructed her managers to have a nurse work a half shift
and pick up the other half on a Saturday to avoid OT.
"If everybody has 0.2 hours of OT a week and there's 150 of you,
that's 75 hours of overtime," says Dr. Johnson. "That's 2 FTEs per
week."
Another OT idea: On low-census days, rather than furlough the per
diem nurse, furlough the staff nurse to keep her under 40 hours. And
Lehigh shares staff between sites. If one site needs 12 people and they
only have 10 and another site has 2 extra staff because the schedule is
light, send them 2 staff, says Dr. Johnson, noting that rerouted nurses
only have to travel between 4 to 13 miles.
Herculean effort
Had Lehigh not engaged the frontline staff, they would have resisted
the taboo topic of financial strain. "I can sit in an office and make all
the demands I want, but it won't matter if staff are not involved and
engaged," says Dr. Johnson. "Nurses hate that this is a business now,
but they appreciate why we have to make these changes."
OSM
S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 6 5
• ALL YOU NEED The slimmed-down urology supplies.
Lehigh
Valley
Health
Network
