Health First
On paper, the benefits of merging three hospitals, a health plan, and a physician's network looked very promising. But much of the success of Florida's Health First, Inc. is attributed to how this strategy has been implemented in real life over the past five years. Getting 5,200 employees to function as a team poses some singular challenges — especially in the area of frontline labor management.
Five hundred new hires annually
Each of the hospitals had its own rich history of pay and benefit policies. Different rules, different benefits, and different policies contributed to occasional tension between the newly merged facilities.
"We had some supervisors reinterpreting pay rules the way they saw fit," said Karen Ardito, ERP systems manager at Health First. "The trouble was, our nurses began moving around from facility to facility. They began discovering that they were paid differently depending upon which facility they were working in. One director would count a tardy this way instead of another, and employees didn't think it was very fair."
Part of the problem was the fact that time and attendance, as well as payroll, were still being calculated on a facility-by-facility (and in some cases manual) basis.
"Here we were, growing at about 500 employees per year, and our systems were still in the dark ages," Ardito said. "We knew we had to do something."
Soon the automation process began. Health First installed PeopleSoft to help consolidate payroll and HR functions in October 1997. Next, Kronos was selected from a short list of vendors to implement an enterprise-wide frontline labor management system.
"We needed to standardize our pay rules and push the responsibility and control of timekeeping back to the frontline managers," said Cynthia Summers, an HR IS systems administrator at Health First. "From a hospital standpoint, Kronos clearly had the most experience and the most to offer, including strong local representation."
Health First brought in Kronos Workforce Central® to centrally track their workforce throughout the network. Immediate benefits included instant standardization of pay rules, a reduction in payroll errors, and a dramatic reduction in the time spent preparing payroll by both the payroll department and frontline supervisors with more pressing responsibilities.
For its success in implementation and achieving real benefits, Kronos presented Health First with one of its annual Best Practices Awards for "Exceptional Creativity in the Management of Change." Best Practices Awards are presented annually to organizations that have achieved excellence in the application of frontline labor management technology.
Efficient training
By purchasing 200 hours of professional services along with the Kronos system, Summers and Ardito ensured that Health First would receive the full benefit of Workforce Central. Two IT staffers and two payroll staffers attended an initial training session, followed by on-site training for 474 frontline supervisors and directors.
For all of the training, though, Health First was impressed by the ease of use and installation of the Kronos solution. "I think it says something for the system when two people with other full-time responsibilities can get it up and running so quickly," Summers said.
Unexpected benefits
"Our primary concern was standardization and automation of the process," said Summers. "We didn't originally set cost saving goals even though Kronos told us we'd see some. Needless to say, we were quite pleased with what we found — by cutting down on unnecessary overtime, time spent preparing timesheets, payroll, etc., we've been able to realize a savings of something like $4 million per year."
Kronos' interface with the RES-Q nurse scheduling application has resulted in further efficiencies, enabling the nursing staff to enter schedules in just one application, one time, while feeding data to both systems simultaneously.
In addition, Health First has come up with some other innovative uses for the Kronos system. For example, their on-site daycare center issues badges to the toddlers in their care. By swiping their cards on entry and exiting, an up-to-the-minute attendance list is always available to refer to for emergencies and locating the children.
Looking at what's next
Ready to push the limits of their new system, Health First is preparing to add all contract employees to the system so that they can track and verify the accuracy of agency billing. Currently the Finance department spends approximately 12 hours per week on this task.
Health First recently purchased Visionware — Kronos' labor analytics solution for healthcare — in an effort to further reduce labor expenses.
"We've had so much positive response," Ardito said. "Supervisors now have a real-time tool to see where they are relative to their budgets and employees are now positive that everyone is receiving fair — and equal — pay."
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