Kronos^® for Healthcare Provides Total Workforce Management Solution for Five Star Quality Care

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Five Star Quality Care, Inc. is one of the top five senior management and assisted living providers in the U.S., with over 160 locations in 29 states. More than 17,000 employees are responsible for providing a wide range of care, from short-term rehabilitation to long-term care, skilled nursing, hospice care, physical and occupational therapy, and more.

“Our organization has grown tremendously over the past six years,” explains Kip Kransdorf, director of payroll and labor reporting for Five Star, “and so have the challenges to managing overtime and controlling labor costs. We’ve been successful because we work efficiently and try very hard to keep costs down, and the Workforce Central® suite has been an important part of that strategy.”

Recently, Five Star made the decision to implement Workforce Scheduler™ software, the powerful scheduling component of the Workforce Central suite. Kransdorf is excited about the possibilities. “We anticipate a large potential savings with Kronos’ scheduling solution, thanks to more control of overtime. That’s very important to a publicly traded healthcare organization of our size.”

Treatment begins with effecting change

The relationship between Kronos and Five Star Quality Care began when Five Star was facing an operational crisis. With two of its largest tenant facilities facing bankruptcy, it was clear that a better management strategy was needed. The decision was made to focus on the operational side of the business and form a new corporation.

The situation demanded fast action and results that would satisfy creditors and investors alike. “We had a 90-day window to prove ourselves, find out what was working and what wasn’t, and make big changes quickly,” says Kransdorf.

Five Star needed to build an IT infrastructure from scratch, with a network that could link 58 facilities to the new headquarters in Newton, Mass. The organization also wanted to implement key solutions that would help them to effect change; primary among those was Kronos.

Starting with the basics

“Our initial goal with Kronos was to get people paid timely and accurately,” explains Kransdorf. “We needed to quickly centralize our payroll function and start collecting information that would allow us to make key workforce management decisions.”

Several of Five Star’s facilities were already using Kronos solutions for time and labor management. “We immediately got everyone running on Kronos. It was the best system for our environment, and had the capabilities we were looking for going forward.”

Today, Five Star leverages Workforce Timekeeper™ software, the time and labor component of the Workforce Central suite, to control labor costs — more specifically, the use of overtime and agency labor. The application gives Five Star’s managers the insight and tools they need to manage their workforce more efficiently and effectively.

“Kronos allows each facility to understand what their staffing levels are relative to what they should be,” says Kransdorf. “As the census changes, they can have the appropriate staff scheduled to the most effective level of care. This is especially critical in facilities where care levels are regulated by the state.”

Five Star also considers Workforce Timekeeper to be an important tool in managing its Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. “Without the application, we wouldn’t be able to look at historical data or provide all of the information.”

A more complete workforce management suite

Five Star upgraded to Workforce Central v5 in 2004, and according to Kransdorf, the most significant advantage has been the ability to leverage a more complete workforce management solution — one that now favors optimized scheduling.

“Workforce Scheduler will provide a quick and comprehensive view of where employees are, what hours they’ve worked, and how they can be utilized,” says Kransdorf. “That’s a huge advantage when you have 160 facilities and anywhere between 120 and 150 employees at each location.”

Workforce Scheduler will also enable Five Star to know the competency and availability of each employee and understand where and when they can be scheduled — essentially at the touch of a button. “It can show what they’re qualified to do, what their preferences are, and what hours they’ve worked. It also provides additional control over labor costs. We can limit overtime and agency labor and avoid call-in bonuses when we know which employees are available on a regular scheduling basis.”

Effective training is a virtual reality

When Five Star first implemented Kronos, the company assigned and trained a Kronos coordinator at each of its facilities to assist in managing multiple projects. And because the facilities were located in 12 different states, the company chose to have the facilitators trained via the Kronos Virtual Classroom (KVC), Kronos’ web-based distance learning program.

“Without KVC, it would have been extremely difficult to get everybody trained as quickly as we needed to,” explains Kransdorf, “and we were confident when we made the decision to use KVC to support our rollout of Workforce Central. It proved to be ideal for helping us develop train-the-trainer programs for implementations and helped us develop our own instructors for future training needs.”

Workforce Central delivers business value

Since implementing Kronos, Five Star Quality Care has realized substantial cost savings and achieved higher levels of productivity and operational efficiency. But Kransdorf says that Kronos has also been instrumental in the company’s growth.

“Workforce Central has given us the flexibility we need in workforce management in order to expand our business,” explains Kransdorf. “Since first implementing Kronos we’ve expanded our services to include pharmacy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, nutritional services, and more. And with the acquisitions we’ve made, new employees are always amazed at how intuitive and user-friendly Workforce Central is.”

Kransdorf is also looking forward to the potential benefits around Kronos’ scheduling solution. “As we continue to grow, scheduling is going to become more of a concern when it comes to labor costs. We know we can count on Kronos to help us manage it. It’s going to be a real competitive advantage for us.”