INTRODUCTION: A health system serving Burlington and Camden Counties, New Jersey, sought to improve labor productivity for its emergency departments, with emphasis on optimizing nursing staff schedules. METHODS: Using historical emergency department visit data and operating constraints, a decision support tool was designed to recommend the number of emergency nurses needed in each hour for each day of the week. RESULTS: The pilot emergency department nurse managers used the decision support tool's recommendations to redeploy nurse hours from weekends into a float pool to support periods of demand spikes on weekdays. Productivity improved significantly, with no unfavorable impact on patient throughput, and patient and staff satisfaction. DISCUSSION: Today's emergency department manager can leverage the increasing ease of access to the emergency department information system's data repository to successfully design a simple but effective tool to support the alignment of its nursing schedule with demand patterns.
INTRODUCTION: A health system serving Burlington and Camden Counties, New Jersey, sought to improve labor productivity for its emergency departments, with emphasis on optimizing nursing staff schedules. METHODS: Using historical emergency department visit data and operating constraints, a decision support tool was designed to recommend the number of emergency nurses needed in each hour for each day of the week. RESULTS: The pilot emergency department nurse managers used the decision support tool's recommendations to redeploy nurse hours from weekends into a float pool to support periods of demand spikes on weekdays. Productivity improved significantly, with no unfavorable impact on patient throughput, and patient and staff satisfaction. DISCUSSION: Today's emergency department manager can leverage the increasing ease of access to the emergency department information system's data repository to successfully design a simple but effective tool to support the alignment of its nursing schedule with demand patterns.