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always given out those bonuses." Finding staffing solutions Ms. Natal says that finding a staffing schedule that balances the needs of patients without sacrificing productivity is crucial to the center's financial success. Finding that fine balance took some work. "When I came here 8 years ago, all staff came in no matter what our case load looked like," says Ms. Natal. "We would have a full depart- ment even if our schedule was light. That just wasn't useful." To wrangle in staffing costs, Ms. Natal created a staffing grid that tells her how many staff members are needed based on the number of patients and ORs in use. "If all 4 ORs are running, I've figured that we need 10 RNs and 7 aids or techs," she says. This grid helps make the schedule and, on light days, determine if 5 2 O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 5 used in the procedure. Since the spreadsheets are part of the Google Cloud web-based system, the center's staff, OR manager, administrator, bookkeeper and medical director can review and edit them simultaneously. Individuals can even comment on the cells in the spreadsheet, so questions that pop up are quickly answered online, says Mr. Burchartz. When completed, the spreadsheets give the center a raw look at the expenses associat- ed with every case performed. And because the individual cases are categorized by sur- geon name in the master document, the center can use the data to track a doc's use of supplies and see if his case booking time is matching actual procedure time, among other benchmarking items. "It's become almost like the backbone to our well-oiled machine," says Mr. Burchartz. "We not only use it to track our costs, but also to provide patients with cash quotes, maintain accu- rate inventory of supplies, and use it for our bookkeeping, insurance deductions and billing." The best part? "It cost us nothing to purchase." — Kendal Gapinski O R E X C E L L E N C E AWA R D S O R E X C E L L E N C E AWA R D S