CHRISTUS Health Realizes Significant Labor Savings in Large-Scale Implementation
Dallas-based CHRISTUS Health is one of the largest Catholic health systems in the U.S., employing more than 25,000 people. CHRISTUS is comprised of over 40 hospitals and long-term care facilities, as well as dozens of other health services in more than 70 metropolitan and rural communities in five states and Mexico.
When CHRISTUS Health was formed in 1999 by combining Incarnate Word Health System and Sisters of Charity Health Care System, it had six systems in place for tracking employee time and attendance with little continuity of data collection from site to site. Some facilities still tracked time manually. Most also conducted labor and productivity analysis manually, while a few performed no analytics at all.
Centralizing and standardizing systems helps on the 'Journey to Excellence'
In 2001, when CHRISTUS Health launched a "Journey to Excellence" to focus on providing high quality clinical care and service while providing community value, CHRISTUS leaders knew they needed to systematically track labor costs and productivity. "From the beginning, we recognized there was a critical need to standardize timekeeping methods and tracking of labor productivity, " notes Kim Trahan, senior project manager at CHRISTUS Health. "We knew we needed a single, enterprise-wide solution that would allow us to efficiently monitor timekeeping and productivity and show us where we could find labor savings."
Six time and attendance vendors were asked to present solutions for an enterprise workforce management system. Following a rigorous review process that examined the variety of time tracking options, the functionality of both time and attendance and labor tracking systems, as well as cost benefits, Kronos was selected to implement the first official system-wide project for the newly formed CHRISTUS Health.
Within one year of implementation, CHRISTUS Health realized substantial savings in labor-related costs, as well as improved oversight and management of productivity. For achieving these significant results through a successfully managed large-scale implementation, Kronos presented CHRISTUS Health with a Best Practices Award. These awards are presented annually to organizations that demonstrate excellence in the application of Kronos solutions.
User-friendly solution boosts employee comfort level
The first implementation meeting between the CHRISTUS Health and Kronos teams determined that 13 different time and labor systems needed to be consolidated into one. Adding to the challenge were the different pay practices and pay codes used by each facility in the CHRISTUS system. Kronos' Workforce Central® suite, however, was more than up to the challenge of handling the diverse needs of the organization.
"Many of the sites had no automated time and attendance system, so implementation in these areas could have been challenging for these users, who had never been responsible for editing time with an automated system," explains Trahan. "But the Kronos system is so user friendly, we were able to quickly get end users to a comfort level with the system and their daily timekeeping tasks."
Getting a 25,000-person organization up and running with a new system is no small task. To enhance a smooth transition process, implementation took place across the organization in several phases. A first step was selecting appropriate time collection methods for each facility. With a variety of Kronos options available, CHRISTUS selected data collection terminals for a majority of the sites, with telephone and web options utilized at other locations. The array of time collection methods allowed selections to be tailored to the individual needs of employees.
Training users on Kronos solutions was made easier by the simple customization of training kits. Kronos modified the user's guide for each facility based on the facility's specific pay practices. Users of Kronos' web-based solution found the training material so easy to use and understand that no modifications were needed.
Visionware uncovers agency labor over-billing
A second phase included an enterprise initiative to make Kronos' Visionware® the labor analytics tool used by all CHRISTUS Health hospitals. Monitoring and managing productivity was previously performed with spreadsheets, if at all. "Before we implemented Kronos, everything was done manually and employees were overwhelmed with spreadsheets that were time-consuming and error prone," notes Trahan. "We needed a systematic method of tracking productivity and labor costs."
One area of concern for a number of CHRISTUS facilities had been the high cost of agency labor, but determining how much agency labor was costing had been challenging without a solution in place. With Workforce Central and Visionware up and running, agency workers are now required to use the terminals to track their time. The results showed that at some locations the agencies were charging for more hours than were actually worked. "We were able to work with the agencies to more accurately pay for the time used and that time is now verifiable," says Trahan. "The reduction in labor costs has been significant."
Clearer view of performance and productivity
Visionware also allowed for the standardization of workload statistics used to evaluate performance in hospital departments. For example, all nursing departments use adjusted patient days as their standard performance measure and laboratory departments use billed tests as their measure. "This standardization of statistics allows senior leadership to look at performance in the functional areas of the hospitals with a commonality that was not possible before," says Trahan.
Another benefit of the system is an enterprise productivity dashboard that CHRISTUS created to allow executive management to review all regional productivity data on a single page. Additional drilldown data is available on each hospital in the region, as well as for each department and pay period. Using the dashboard information, corporate and regional executives can easily make enterprise-wide comparisons.
Catalyst for change
"Visionware has become a catalyst for change," claims Trahan. "Senior level management now has the ability to look at labor costs with a level of detail that was not available before." As a case in point, the CFO of one hospital tracks the daily productivity index of each department to encourage improvement.
This detailed level of labor productivity information enabled CHRISTUS Health to realize a sizeable reduction in labor costs in one year, even as pay rates and company-paid benefit costs rose. Agency labor usage declined at a rapid rate or was eliminated entirely in some regions. Additional labor savings were also realized with payroll processing reduced to less than one day.
"We are seeing significant overall improvements in our labor costs as a result of the combined implementation of Kronos' Workforce Central and Visionware," says Trahan. "And we look forward to seeing additional savings in the future."
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