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Published on: January 15, 2017
Designing a data-driven decision support tool for nurse scheduling in the emergency department: a case study of a
Mojisola Otegbeye1, Roslyn Scriber1, Donna Ducoin1
1Marlton, NJ.
Introduction:
A health system serving Burlington and Camden Counties, New Jersey, sought to improve labor productivity for its emergency departments, with emphasis on optimizing nursing staff schedules.
Methods:
Using historical emergency department visit data and operating constraints, a decision support tool was designed to recommend the number of emergency nurses needed in each hour for each day of the week.
Results:
The pilot emergency department nurse managers used the decision support tool's recommendations to redeploy nurse hours from weekends into a float pool to support periods of demand spikes on weekdays. Productivity improved significantly, with no unfavorable impact on patient throughput, and patient and staff satisfaction.
Discussion:
Today's emergency department manager can leverage the increasing ease of access to the emergency department information system's data repository to successfully design a simple but effective tool to support the alignment of its nursing schedule with demand patterns.
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