A situation developed at our hospital a few years ago that might be similar to a situation you’ve experienced in your practice. Our hospital Medical Director, my partner in a sense, and I became acutely aware of a dire need for additional staffing in one of the departments of our 24/7 blended veterinary hospital. Conventional approaches hadn't worked and it was time for some new thinking. I convened a meeting of all department supervisors and issued a challenge: "This is not only X Department's responsibility but all of ours." In a pre-meeting message, I encouraged them to come to the meeting prepared to brainstorm and perhaps even sacrifice from their own areas in order to bring more wholeness to the entire practice.
When we met, I began by thanking everyone for attending, especially those who came in on their day off, and restated the challenge. After looking at overtime hours and costs everyone was surprised to learn that we could essentially afford a few new staff members if we could cut down on overtime, even by just a little. This lead to a discussion of what shifts we could add and how that would help support our growing need for staff. We next began discussing what causes overtime and the team quickly concluded that overtime most often occurs during the days/times where we don't have enough overlap of support staff. A key shift was quickly identified and through some give and take discussion, one department supervisor volunteered to allow one of her staff to fill some gaps. The staff member, who was fortunately working at that time, was consulted and consented to a temporary change. We were off to a good start.
I wanted to mention this in light of Abby Suiter's article this month in which she discusses the powerful use of KPI's in a veterinary practice. In our situation, our overall support staffing cost wasn't too bad; but our utilization of staff was poor. With focused eyes and ears, we set out to solve real problems. We came up with a game plan and communicated it to our doctors so that they would understand what we're doing to address the issue. We're having ongoing conversations with staff inside and outside this particular department to see how we can better align available human resources. We're also advertising more aggressively and otherwise trying to come up with ways to better support our doctors as they strive to provide excellent patient care. Abby points out that sometimes you really have to look a little further into your numbers to know what story they are telling you and also what to do about it. That's exactly what we did and we've seen positive results. Thanks for the great advice Abby!
Jon Cunnington, MBA, CVPM
President