Labor Resource Productivity Monitoring

We have provided an overview of this management tool software below.  Download full specifications in Acrobat PDF format for more information. You can obtain a copy of Adobe's Acrobat Reader from our downloads area. 

• INTRODUCTION
• SYSTEM OVERVIEW
• REPORT OVERVIEW
  

INTRODUCTION

Management of a hospital requires strict attention to the monitoring and control of hospital resources, and the largest single resource in any hospital is personnel. It is important that hospitals define required labor resources at the department level, and have a means of monitoring actual versus required staffing on a continuous and timely basis to ensure the most cost-effective use of this expensive resource.

Once reliable workload standards have been developed for hospital departments, these standards must then be translated into required hours and required staffing for comparison to actual performance. Such comparisons will assist managers in making staffing decisions that will more closely align actual staffing with required workload. Accurate alignment of required and actual staffing will maximize staff utilization and minimize costs, without disruptions in service.

Effective management of labor productivity requires a commitment and involvement at all levels of hospital management. It also requires the distribution of prompt, informative, and understandable productivity performance reports to these management levels.

These reports should combine relevant workload standards and statistics to compute required hours for comparison to actual hours. In order to be truly effective and reliable, these reports must be properly linked to other internal hospital systems such as payroll, position control, budgeting, and accounts receivable.

The AMS Management Database System (MDbSys) meets all of the criteria described. This tool was developed by Applied Management Systems (AMS) to provide health care organizations with a cost-effective productivity monitoring system. The AMS MDbSys meets all of the criteria described above and is appropriate for use in any size organization with department-level productivity standards, regardless of whether these standards have been developed by AMS, by other firms, or by the organization.

SYSTEM OVERVIEW

The AMS MDbSys is a reporting system used by health care organizations to evaluate productivity on a departmental, divisional, and executive level. This system effectively consolidates and organizes information and data from the various sources and systems within the organization. The uniqueness of this system is displayed through its adaptability to the range of productivity strategies that health care organizations use.

The AMS MDbSys is designed to run on an IBM^® or compatible personal computer, using Microsoft Access 97^® or greater. It provides concise, meaningful productivity performance reporting at the department, division, and executive levels of management. 

The AMS MDbSys is table driven and is designed to accommodate:

• Unlimited number of departments.
• Unlimited reporting periods.
• Up to 12 variable statistics with workload standards and/or department-specific trend statistics.
• Quality index reporting.
• Report outputs:
  • Department Reports
  • Department Graphs
  • Division Summary Reports
  • Alternative Summary Reports
  • Executive Summary Reports

REPORT OVERVIEW

Department Summary
The department detail summary report is a detailed report of department activity for all reporting periods and year-to-date totals. Activity detail reported includes productivity statistics, time standards, user-defined ratios, labor utilization, actual, required and budgeted hours/FTEs, and variances.

Division Summary
The division summary report is a department productivity and staffing analysis report for a designated set of periods and year-to-date totals for each department within a division, as well as a year-to-date total for the entire division. Typically, this report is distributed to division administrators along with copies of corresponding department summary reports.

Current Period & YTD Summary
The current period and year-to-date summary report is similar to the division summary report, except it calculates just the current period and year-to-date totals.

Alternate Division Summary
The alternate division summary report is the same as the division summary report. Alternate division summary reports are typically used when a special subset or combination of departments are required (i.e., med/surg units, critical care, rehab services, etc.).

Executive Summary
The executive summary report provides a hospital-wide productivity analysis for current and year-to-date periods. Typically distributed to the Chief Executive Officer and Senior Management, this report shows performance improvements or deteriorations of the hospital as a whole and by divisional groups.

Graphics Summary
Interfaced with the AMS MDbSys, the graphics package (Microsoft Excel 97^®) or greater provides useful, decision-making charts that show utilization and staffing trends at the department level. The graphs include three standard graphs and one user-defined graph customized utilizing any information in the AMS MDbSys.