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O C T O B E R 2 0 1 4 | O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
STAFFING
minute to try to do so. One unused OR per week costs $200 for a
$25/hour surgical tech and $320 for a $40/hour nurse. Even if that only
happens once a month, that's $6,240 in gross wages annually — not
including benefits paid — with no revenue generated to offset it.
Don't be quick to cut staff.
Cutting hours and laying off staff will
save money, but it could negatively affect your bottom line in
other ways. Cutting hours can reduce a nurse's or tech's take-home
pay, forcing them to find sources of supplemental income or look to
another facility for a higher paying position. Morale could drop after
the loss of team members, causing the remaining staff to also seek
employment elsewhere, which might leave slim pickings for keeping
your rooms fully staffed.
Additionally, your surgeons might not have their first choice of staff
if you've cut their favorite team members' hours or days. Bottom line:
Cutting staff should be a last resort.
Assign shifts creatively.
If you have to make a drastic staffing
move, first consider reallocating staff to staggered shifts and
offering physicians OR times after office hours. Meeting the schedul-
ing requests of surgeons and offering employees a chance to alter
their regular hours without affecting their take-home pay is a win-win
for everyone.
Poll your physicians to see if any would be interested in time slots
after 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. If there's enough interest, consider adding a
10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. surgery shift to complement your 6:30 a.m. to 3:00
p.m. clinical teams. This schedule tweak may also increase the morn-
ing shift's efficiency, because the evening team can set up rooms and
pull supplies for the next day's cases.
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