Hca 270 Managing Staff - Managing Staffing

Hca 270 Managing Staff

Healthcare managers are sometimes referred to as healthcare administrators and healthcare executives. At the most basic level, the healthcare manager job description is to manage all or part of a healthcare facility (Healthcare Manager Job Description, 2010). A health care manager's role will vary depending on type and size of the facility they work in. A health care manager in a large hospital may oversee one department but work with several health care managers to ensure that the hospital runs smoothly and evidently. But at a smaller facility a health care manager may oversee the entire facility.

The role of health care managers can vary depending on the position. Examples are: Clinical managers, Health information managers, and Group medical practice managers. Clinical managers create and implement policies for a specific department, evaluate the performance of personnel and develop the yearly budgets. Clinical managers have medical experience in the field in which they work in. Example they may oversee the department of respiratory therapy they would have some experience or training for this field. Health information manager maintain health records and makes sure medical records are stored properly. They also must be up to date with government regulations and rules as well as software technology. Group medical practice managers work with a group of medical doctors and handle the budgets, billing, personnel, and patients (Role of a Healthcare Manager, 2010). Healthcare manager are also on 24 hour call and may need to travel to attend meetings.

Healthcare environment is constantly changing and staffing a department appropriately can be a challenge. It is not uncommon for the budget projections to be different from the actual volume. Hospital managers must be able to present a budget to justify the need to fill full-time equivalent (FTE) positions. During slow times justification must be clear and accurate for all FTE requests. Using productive and non-productive time for FTE must be accurate when annualizing staff budgets. Productive time represents an employee's net time on the job. Non-Productive time is where the employee is not on duty but gets paid for time on duty example would be vacation days. Budgets are a very important tool for any business and you must know how to use all the tools to create a budget that is clear, accurate, and relevant. Managers need these tools to better predict volume-related staffing variances. The tools can be quickly incorporated into the daily routine, allowing the managers to make real-time staffing decisions that will improve their ability to remain on budget by reducing staff when volume drops--the key to controlling labor costs (Stevenson, 1999).

Health care managers will need to change medical staffing as the landscape of the healthcare industry, including the healthcare workforce, continues to change due to a variety of ongoing or impending forces (Oh, 2010). There are many factors that go into managing staffing. First you must collect all the necessary data for the department like department volumes, hours worked per department including overtime and contract laborers. Department volume can vary and having the trends will help you to understand where additional FTEs may be needed. Hours worked also need to be accounted for in order to utilize the right number of FTE's to schedule. There are many formulas that can help you determine the numbers of FTEs are need at what time of day. When doing a budget you must plug in the productive and non-productive times. Productive are the hours they actually work like a 8 hour shift in the ER, non=productive time is hours not work on the premises but are hours they are credited for like sick days and vacation days. All of the factors play a significant part in managing