The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Scheduling

Healthcare facilities have seen an increased need to optimize costs and utilize their clinical staff efficiently since the start of the pandemic. That’s why the future of nurse scheduling looks like it will rely heavily on artificial intelligence to help streamline day-to-day operations.

For healthcare facilities, AI in nurse scheduling could look like a switch to mobile workforce schedulers that can anticipate staffing requirements by having the correct number of staff, at the right place, at the right time, at the convenience of their fingertips.

Modern workforce scheduling solutions can offer healthcare facilities the ability to empower nurse managers, while also improving time management and reducing nurse burnout. With a modern scheduling solution in place, healthcare facilities can take the first step toward optimizing costs in a way that effectively utilizes clinical staff.

Empowering nurse managers

According to Zebra Technologies’ 2021 Healthcare Management Survey, nearly 60% of all nurse managers surveyed spend more than one day of their work week managing the schedule. This means that in addition to the work they do as nurses, they have additional workload responsibilities that include juggling manual workarounds and staff requests for vacation, different shifts, and holidays. With a modern workforce scheduling solution in place, nurse managers would be empowered to set staffing goals, analyze staff capacity, and make improvements to schedules. This also means that managers would gain real-time insights into the performance of on-site execution and staff operations and receive best practice actions they can take to optimize labor budgeting, site performance, and more.

Modern workforce scheduling solutions also work to cover blind spots that manual systems tend to miss. Each respondent in Zebra’s survey noted that there are gaps that their current system doesn’t catch like licenses and certifications, specific floor or unit rules and seniority prioritization when it comes to vacation or holidays. With mobile and self-scheduling solutions, nurses have more visibility to change scheduling preferences on their own time, leaving nurse managers with more time to focus on what really matters — patient care.

Reducing nurse burnout

One of the most significant values of providing an efficient staffing solution is reducing nurse burnout. Another statistic from Zebra Technologies’ 2021 Healthcare Management Survey shows that 71% of respondents view scheduling and pay as the most important factors in job satisfaction. By giving nurses increased visibility into the scheduling process through mobile or self-scheduling solutions, healthcare facilities can help ensure that their clinical team is getting the proper amount of work-life balance that leaves them satisfied at work.

Next steps

Modern workforce scheduling solutions can offer healthcare facilities an artificial intelligence (AI) powered way that will reduce the administrative burden many nurse managers are carrying. This should not only help reduce nurse burnout, but also enable nurse managers to truly focus on their jobs as healthcare professionals providing better and more personalized care to their patients because they’re not bogged down with paperwork. To learn more about how to implement AI into scheduling operations, visit our website here.