Far too often, healthcare teams work in isolation, with poor coordination across departments and minimal sharing of information. This fragmented approach, known as siloing, leads to ineffective communication, missed start dates, having clinicians start before payors are ready, disjointed care, etc... To address these critical issues, healthcare organizations need solutions that connect teams and facilitate seamless collaboration.
Workforce management, which optimizes clinical staffing through streamlined credentialing, scheduling and integrated data, is key to dismantling silos. Enter the RosterOps Approach - a method of healthcare workforce management that offers a promising model to break down departmental barriers and enhance team connectivity through workflow improvements, shared platforms, and data-driven alignment. We’ll explain more on this approach later.
Understanding Silos in Healthcare Organizations
When we say silos in healthcare, what exactly does that mean? Silos refer to the divide between different departments or units within a healthcare organization. These detached groups often operate independently, with separate hierarchies, processes, data sources and objectives. Information sharing is limited, and collaboration across silos is minimal. This fragmentation manifests in several ways:
Communication Breakdowns
With siloed systems between departments like recruiting, credentialing, operations, accounting, and IT, there is limited visibility into critical workforce information. Details around clinician hiring, onboarding, scheduling, compensation, and more may not be effectively conveyed across the organization.
It can take over a dozen different teams to get a clinician scheduled for a single shift. Ensuring seamless collaboration between recruiting, credentialing, operations, payroll, medical staff offices, and other groups is essential but often lacking. Critical hand-offs like confirming start dates between credentialing and operations or sharing agreed upon rates from recruiting to accounting can fall through the cracks.
This communication breakdown results in a fragmented and frustrating onboarding experiences for new hires. It also leads to missed deadlines, scheduling errors, incorrect compensation, and more problems that threaten workforce operations and care delivery. Increased connectivity through unified platforms, coordinated workflows, and open communication pathways is crucial.
Duplicated Efforts
When departments like billing, scheduling, and HR use different spreadsheets or platforms, data must be re-entered manually. Duplicating efforts wastes time and introduces errors.
The Heavy Impacts of Silos in Healthcare Organizations
Fragmented systems and operations take a real toll on the organization itself:
- Operational inefficiencies - With manual spreadsheets and email communication used to bridge gaps between siloed teams, critical details are missed. This leads to issues like delays in clinician onboarding, scheduling clinicians with expired credentials, and payroll errors resulting from misaligned data.
- Administrative frustration - Staff across recruiting, credentialing, scheduling, payroll and more waste countless hours tracking down needed information from other departments. Duplicating data entry across disconnected systems also burns time and money.
- Reactive planning - Lack of visibility into staffing needs, clinician availability, budget status, and other key data makes proactive decision making impossible. Knee-jerk reactions lead to last-minute contractor spending and wasteful overstaffing.
Increased system connectivity through integrated platforms, coordinated workflows, open communication, and data transparency can transform fragmented healthcare operations.
Examples of Healthcare Silos
Some common disconnects include:
- Scheduling systems and processes are detached from payroll, causing errors in compensation.
- Recruiting and credentialing lack alignment, resulting in onboarding delays.
- Human resources data lives in disparate systems from operations, leading to duplicated efforts.
- Finance and accounting work separately from scheduling, unable to optimize staffing spend.
- Administrative leadership has differing priorities and planning compared to frontline operations staff, breeding misalignment.
When we recognize the silos that exist between critical administrative and operational departments like recruiting, credentialing, scheduling, payroll, and accounting, organizations can start breaking down barriers to connectivity. Increased transparency, coordination, and communication between these interdependent internal teams is essential for optimized care delivery.
Connected Teams are Crucial for Patient Care
With fragmented systems, even the most dedicated staff struggle to deliver efficient, high-quality workforce support and care delivery oversight. However, when administrative and operational teams work in unison, your workforce and organization will benefit.
- Streamlined Onboarding: Smooth transitions of new hires between recruiting, credentialing, payroll, benefits enrollment, IT provisioning and other key functions depend on robust communication channels. When information flows freely, onboarding feels continuous.
- Comprehensive Staff Records: Access to integrated data encompassing credentialing documentation, schedule, compensation, and more enables administrators to have a complete view of each staff member. This holistic system allows for optimized management.
- Proactive Workforce Planning: Open lines of communication facilitate advanced planning and coordination between interdependent teams like recruiting, scheduling and accounting. With real-time visibility into roster health and trends, decisions can be made strategically.
- Operating as One System: With unity across administrative departments and frontline operations staff, the organization functions as an interdependent system focused on workforce productivity and care delivery excellence.
Why Healthcare Teams Need Connectivity
Fragmentation causes countless headaches for recruiting, credentialing, scheduling, accounting, and other critical administrative teams. But connected administrative and operations groups lead to:
- Less frustrated staff - Consolidated platforms and open communication channels allow for rapid access to needed details without hassles or chasing down information. Recruiters shouldn’t waste time tracking down contract rate info from accounting or details on privileging from the medical staff office.
- Higher employee retention - Clinical and non-clinical staff want to work in settings with strong operational support for care delivery. Cross-departmental transparency and accountability provide that.
- Optimized schedules – Real-time visibility into roster availability and trends empowers proactive planning and scheduling between ops teams and physician leaders. This prevents last-minute uncovered shifts.
- Efficient onboarding – Unified employee records with integrated hiring, credentialing, and onboarding workflows delivers a continuous experience for new clinical hires.
With incentives aligning around connected administrative operations, the path forward becomes clear. Now, how can healthcare leaders enable this cross-departmental collaboration?
Introducing the RosterOps Approach
What is the RosterOps Approach?
The Roster Operations (RosterOps) Approach offers a workforce management framework to connect disparate healthcare teams. Let's break it down:
A Unified Workforce Platform
At its core, RosterOps utilizes workforce relationship management (WRM) software to unify data and systems involved in clinical staffing. This central platform integrates scheduling, payroll, HR information, and more.
Cross-Departmental Workflows
Streamlining workflows around recruiting, credentialing, scheduling, finance/accounting and other critical operations aligns interdependent teams. RosterOps maps out these interconnected workflows.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Advanced analytics provide data-driven insights around care delivery patterns, staffing needs, and other trends. RosterOps teams use these insights for agile decision making.
Key Components of the RosterOps Approach
Several elements work together to enhance connectivity:
- Open Communication Pathways: With RosterOps, all team members communicate and collaborate within the workforce platform, replacing siloed email chains or calls.
- Role Clarity: Through the coordination of workflows across departments, the RosterOps approach clarifies how each team’s role contributes to unified goals.
- Aligned Technology: Integrated scheduling, HR, and other systems prevent duplicate data entry and effort.
- Shared Metrics: Unified KPI dashboards align teams around core metrics like budget goals, quality of care, and staff retention.
How RosterOps Supports Connected Teams
This approach breaks down barriers through:
- Enhanced transparency - System-wide data visibility builds mutual understanding between teams.
- Coordinated workflows - Cross-departmental processes enable smooth hand-offs.
- Unified platforms - Consolidated technologies eliminate cumbersome system switching.
- Central communication - Shared channels facilitate coordination and replace siloed calls, emails.
With the RosterOps approach, unity empowers staff, and the patient experience reaches new heights.
Benefits of Implementing the RosterOps Approach
Implementing the RosterOps approach pays dividends through:
Seamless Teamwork
- Streamlined scheduling, credentialing, and onboarding workflows unite cross-functional teams.
- Shared platforms encourage collaboration. Everyone's on the same page.
- Open communication replaces fragmented email chains and calls.
Optimized Staffing
- Data analytics forecast patient demand to guide staffing levels.
- Aligned scheduling and payroll processes ensure the right staffing mix.
- Central oversight prevents overstaffing some units while understaffing others.
Enhanced Workforce Experience
- Staff receive unified communication and access to details needed for onboarding, scheduling, payroll and more in one place.
- Recruiters, credentialers and schedulers can access integrated employee records to coordinate hiring, onboarding and deployment of clinicians.
- Simplified hiring, credentialing, scheduling and payment processes that minimize time wasted on tedious admin tasks.
Operational Efficiency
- Integrated HR, scheduling, and billing systems eliminate duplication.
- Cross-departmental coordination prevents costly last-minute staffing.
- Data visibility enables agile decision-making.
Financial Performance
- Optimized staffing prevents overspending on excess staff or contractors.
- Increased clinician satisfaction boosts loyalty and utilizing services.
- Higher staff retention reduces turnover costs.
System-Wide Unity
- Shared objectives and metrics align all staff around patient outcomes.
- Collaborative culture fosters innovation to continuously improve care.
- Workflows enhance interdependence between departments.
The RosterOps approach nurtures connectivity and elevates healthcare delivery. Patients win. Clinicians win. The organization wins.
Navigating the Barriers to Change - Overcoming Challenges
Implementing large-scale change like implementing the RosterOps approach inevitably faces challenges. Leaders can pave the way for success by:
Addressing Resistance
- Communicate benefits of alignment to build buy-in. Share success stories.
- Involve team members in designing workflows to foster participation.
- Gradually phase in changes to ease the transition period.
Supporting Adoption
- Provide thorough training and resources on new platforms and workflows.
- Identify change champions from various departments to promote engagement.
- Gather feedback to refine the rollout and meet employees' needs.
Planning for Iteration- Set the expectation that RosterOps will evolve over time as needs change.- Continuously evaluate results and pain points to guide enhancement.- Recognize wins and celebrate progress to maintain momentum.
With proactive planning, leaders can steer through hurdles on the journey to connected, patient-centered care.
Continued Evolution
The healthcare landscape will continue shifting. Regulations, technologies, clinician needs - all change with time. As such, the RosterOps approach must keep evolving to drive optimal alignment.
Ongoing enhancements might include:
- Expanding workforce analytics with artificial intelligence.
- Adding platforms like telehealth to increase access.
- Developing mobile functionality for on-the-go coordination.
- Streamlining additional workflows between departments.
When you embrace the RosterOps approach, it will foster ever stronger connectivity to take your healthcare organization into the future.
Connected Care is the Cure
Silos in healthcare organizations threaten patient outcomes, staff satisfaction, and organizational success. On the other hand, when teams communicate openly, share data proactively, and collaborate smoothly, care quality reaches new heights.
The RosterOps approach provides a framework for dismantling silos by unifying systems, clarifying roles, coordinating workflows, and centering cross-functional teamwork. This level of connectivity enables the frictionless hand-offs, holistic understanding, and system-wide coordination that patients deserve.
As care delivery grows more complex, unity and agility will define the highest performing healthcare systems. The implementation of the RosterOps approach means leaders can ensure their teams work smarter, not harder, to provide complete coordinated care. Patients stay healthier and bottom lines improve when everyone works together.
To learn more about leveraging the RosterOps approach to enhance connectivity with Kimedics's purpose-built healthcare workforce platform, request a demo today. It's time to bring your healthcare teams together.
