Mercy Health Partners

Cutting Costs, Boosting Workforce Productivity, and Driving Quality of Care with Kronos® Services

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Mercy Health Partners is a full-service healthcare provider with 10 hospitals and a number of outpatient facilities in east Tennessee. The organization employs more than 1,500 physicians and 6,000 associates. Mercy Health Partners offers services for seniors, in addition to cancer, orthopedics, cardiac, neuroscience, women's services, and other treatment options. The health system's mission puts a special emphasis on treating those who are poor or underserved.

As a full-service medical provider, Mercy Health Partners uses its Kronos^® for Healthcare solution to help provide quality care to its patients by using the right staff at the right time, all the time. Key to achieving this goal: Workforce Scheduler™. Says Erik Collier, Workforce Scheduler administrator at Mercy Health Partners, "The previous system we used allowed only one patient acuity and census per day. With Workforce Scheduler, we upload patient acuity and census information four times per day."

It's not only the provider's scheduling that has improved dramatically. Mercy Health Partners is also controlling labor costs more effectively with Visionware^®. The application's comprehensive labor productivity reports allow the organization to meet its budget on a daily basis. And to round out its integrated Kronos for Healthcare solution, Mercy Health utilizes Workforce Timekeeper™ for its timekeeping.

During the implementation of its Kronos products and for the support of those products, Mercy Health Partners has taken advantage of Kronos’ extensive services portfolio. And the outcomes have been impressive: expedited, improved business results. Increased workforce productivity. And an effective, efficient solution implementation.

Flexible training options help improve productivity

One of the most important factors behind Mercy's longstanding relationship with Kronos is the commitment of Kronos’ Educational Services team to provide quality training and education. The healthcare provider initially used offsite classroom training at its home facility to get employees up and running quickly on its Kronos solution. Collier is a fan of the classroom training. "The trainer who led the classroom sessions made a great impression on me. He did a fantastic job teaching and interacting. It was a great learning environment."

The training provided by Kronos Educational Services has resulted in significant time savings and increased productivity for both employees and managers at Mercy Health Partners. Employees are better able to manage their own timecards, freeing managers to focus more on delivering quality care. Collier and Mercy Health Partners Systems Analyst Dan Woods both agreed that the training was not too difficult to comprehend, despite the quantity of features associated with the solution. "Kronos does a great job of tailoring its training programs to fit your learning style," says Woods enthusiastically.

Seamless implementation, easy-to-use learning tools

Kronos Professional Services constitutes an important advantage to Mercy Health Partners. Both Woods and Collier appreciate the efficiency of the implementations and upgrades of Mercy Health Partners' Kronos solutions. "From the beginning we were very new to this process," Collier says. "Kronos made it very easy for us to understand the implementation and how it would work for us. We would like to continue using the Kronos Professional Services team for future projects. This will enable us to continue to maximize our system benefits."

Another aspect of Kronos Services that makes Mercy Health Partners' Kronos solution easy to own: "Kronos At Your Service" webinars. They provide valuable information for users to refer to during the ongoing learning process. Dan Woods was particularly impressed with the webinars: "They're great — very easy to use and provide worthwhile information. We have replayed the webinars multiple times and refer back to them often."

Easy-to-understand support, quick resolution of issues

Kronos' continued support has proved beneficial to Mercy Health Partners. "We have always received prompt responses to any questions we had," Collier says. His favorite support feature: eCase Management. With this feature, Collier can gain rapid, online answers to his particular questions or systems issues from Kronos' support team at any time.

Says Collier, "It saves time not having to enter the information into a phone system, and I have easy access to which issues have been commented on through eCase Management via the customer portal. The system is really easy to use." There is also updated product information, a technical alerts section, and a technical best practices guide available through Kronos' self-help customer portal. Collier finds the email updates from eCase Management extremely valuable, with information tailored to Mercy Health Partners' specific needs.

Kronos helps Mercy Health Partners continue quality care initiatives

Mercy Health Partners' plans to upgrade to Workforce Timekeeper 6 and Workforce Scheduler 6 are already in progress. "Version 6 of each product will add a lot of features and improve our scheduling even further," says Collier.

With its complete workforce management solution from Kronos, Mercy Health Partners is better able to control labor costs, keep workforce productivity high, and continue its initiative of providing optimal quality care. Collier sums it up: "Kronos for Healthcare allows us to obtain the most accurate information. Reduce overtime. And analyze information such as hours per patient day. For excellent products and reliable services, Kronos is our partner of choice."

©2009, Kronos Incorporated. Kronos, the Kronos logo, and Visionware are registered trademarks and Workforce Timekeeper and Workforce Scheduler are trademarks of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change. All rights reserved.