Visionware® and Innovative Thinking Generate Bottom-line Results for Inova Fairfax Hospital
Inova Fairfax Hospital and Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children is
a 753-bed regional medical center serving the Washington D.C.
metro area. The hospital provides a full range of medical, surgical,
and support services and employs more than 5,500 employees.
This medical center's offerings include northern Virginia's only
Level One trauma center and the nation's sixth busiest obstetrics
program. But recently the largest healthcare employer in Fairfax
County, Va. discovered that it needed to more accurately track and
monitor productivity and better manage its $300 million payroll.
One specific challenge Inova Fairfax faced was staying within
payroll budget limits; one year it even exceeded its salary budget
by $16 million. To address the problem, Inova Fairfax turned to
Kronos and its Visionware labor analytics software solution.
Implementing Visionware and employing some innovative tactics
on its own helped Inova Fairfax successfully adhere to budget
guidelines. In fact, during the first eight weeks of using Visionware — after being over budget for 37 consecutive pay periods — Inova
Fairfax realized a favorable variance, and it now hopes to reduce
the $16 million variance to zero.
For Inova Fairfax such impressive results didn't go unnoticed.
For generating enthusiasm and organization-wide buy-in, Kronos
presented Inova Fairfax with a Best Practices Award. These Best
Practices Awards are presented annually to organizations that
achieve excellence in the application of Kronos technology.
Addressing salary budget overruns
Bill Nay, Inova Fairfax's director of budget, clearly remembers the
challenges his organization faced. "We had problems staying within
salary budget limits," he says. "It culminated the year we exceeded
budget by $16 million. Needless to say, senior management was not
happy about this situation, and when they made it clear that such
excess would not be acceptable, we knew we needed a solution."
Visionware is Kronos' industry-leading labor analytics solution
for healthcare organizations. Visionware pulls data from multiple
information systems, such as billing, payroll, and time and
attendance. It then analyzes and reports on exactly the information
frontline and senior managers need — based on current patient
volume. As a result, they make better-informed, real-time labor
decisions on the type, quantity, and mix of labor.
Improved insight leads to improved results
Mr. Nay explains just how valuable this information is. "Visionware
gave us the data we needed to create 'dashboard' reports that
highlighted salaries, FTEs, and premium hours, all of which helped
us compare the productivity of each assistant vice president (AVP)."
In turn, this report helped produce a competitive spirit where each
AVP could see how he was performing compared to his peers.
Productivity soon surged. "Visionware gave our AVPs daily insight
into critical labor information, both for their own department and
the rest of the hospital," remembers Mr. Nay. The competitive
fervor eventually reached the point where many AVPs called the
budget department looking for preliminary results — days before
the reports were complete. "All of this demonstrated that a
metamorphosis was well underway," says Mr. Nay.
Tools for the transformation
Inova Fairfax continued to push for results by devising another
way to get all of its departments involved. "We created a top ten
list — although some would call it a bottom ten list — of the
worst performers," Mr. Nay says. "This was nothing more than
a graph listing the bottom ten productivity indices for a two-pay
period average."
But it was really much more than that. Mr. Nay elaborates on
how this list quickly generated some impressive results. "If a
department dropped into the bottom ten, it could get out by
having two positive pay periods in a row," he says. "When we
started this program, it only took an index in the high 80s
(percentile) to avoid making the list, but now this number has
jumped to 95 percent. We now hope that this bottom ten list will
become just a bottom five because no one else will be eligible."
Inova Fairfax's department directors dreaded making this list
because the result was a meeting with the budget office to plan
a corrective course of action. During the meeting, department
managers learned that the difference between operating at 90
percent and 100 percent is actually very small when you look at it
on a daily basis. For example, many times the required action plan
is to reduce less than 12 hours of labor a day. With Visionware's
productivity reports, department managers have the tools they
need to control labor on a daily basis — before it's too late.
While this program was extremely effective at reforming the
worst performers, Inova Fairfax was concerned complacency
could set in if its departments only strived to avoid the bottom
ten list. "After all, there are forty-five departments other than
these bottom ten," says Mr. Nay. So again Inova Fairfax invented
a creative way to increase overall performance.
The Kronos Kickoff Classic
An upcoming football season inspired a unique and popular
64-team tournament, dubbed the Kronos Kickoff Classic, to
drive results. Mr. Nay explains. "We established four sixteenteam
brackets that pitted the most natural rivals against each
other in the early rounds. The prize for each bracket winner
was two tickets to a preseason NFL game as well as other great
prizes. All of this helped create a level of enthusiasm for
Visionware and generated heightened awareness of the
importance of salary and FTE control."
"After the first round of the tournament, the senior director of
finance was able to announce that after being over budget for 37
consecutive pay periods, the hospital had a favorable variance of
$33,000," recalls Mr. Nay. "This favorable variance jumped to
$95,000 and has grown ever since. The end result is that we may
reduce our $16 million variance to zero in one year."
Next steps
In addition to upgrading to the latest version of Visionware in the
coming year, Inova Fairfax is also going to give all senior directors
and AVPs access to Visionware's management exception desktop
feature. "This will prove to be a popular and powerful tool for
them to use in reviewing each of their department's performances,"
states Mr. Nay. The management exception desktop displays
real-time productivity data. This information is rolled up by
each department, but they can drill-down to see as much
detail as required.
Mr. Nay is extremely pleased with Inova Fairfax's improvement.
"It took time, but the results, due to the spirit of competition and
management buy-in, have been far greater than anyone could
have imagined."
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