Long-term care facilities across Canada have been battling numerous challenges in the past year due to circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 virus. From ongoing staffing shortages, facility outbreaks, changing resident needs and acuity levels, quarantining, staff sick days, and overall stress and burnout, this sector’s staffing resource needs are frequently changing. And with an already problematic undersupply of healthcare workers, long-term care facilities and nursing homes are in desperate need of additional help in supporting the daily needs of their residents.
The Red Cross has deployed resources across the country in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, and most recently British Columbia. These additional resources offer a wealth of aid, including respite support for overworked staff, additional personnel capacity to assist with daily comfort and care needs of the residents, organizing and delivering personal protective equipment and providing training for the prevention of disease transmission.
A Strong Foundation to Support Constant Change
Long-term care facilities need to be agile and responsive in order to adapt to changing situations quickly. As internal staff members fall ill or need to quarantine due to an outbreak, those suddenly vacant shifts need to be replaced by either another internal employee or an external resource, like a staffing agency or other support services. Suppose an additional resource is acquired to provide much needed help to an overburdened unit or department; in that case, the ability to gain visibility into staffing levels across the organization is paramount to optimizing resources across the organization.
When external resources are added to a facility’s staffing roster, it is even more critical than ever to stay organized and have full visibility over your schedule and staff. You need to know who is on shift at all times, whether those resources are internal versus external, who is available to fulfill open shifts at any given time, and understand where understaffing is an issue to deploy assistance quickly where it is most needed.
A digital, full-scale staff scheduling platform that manages your facility’s entire scheduling life cycle will provide the foundational structure required to support those constant changes and help your facilities be more flexible with your schedules and staffing resources.
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Complete Staff Schedule Management for Your Long-Term Care Facility
Logibec Scheduling & Analytics is a full suite, staff schedule management solution that focuses on solving the staffing challenges in the long-term care sector now and in the future. With a fully integrated suite of scheduling modules purposely designed to support Canada's healthcare facilities, Logibec Scheduling & Analytics creates schedules configured specifically to your facility’s staffing needs. The staff scheduling software solves shift fulfillment issues and manages the entire staff scheduling journey that your organization needs to ensure the safety and care of your valuable residents.
Flexible Schedule Maintenance and Staff Resource Tracking
Logibec Scheduling & Analytics makes tracking external staff resources easy, from staffing agencies or other support services, with the ability to track organization names, contact information, and the resource’s full names in the system. Schedulers can assign them to open shifts as quickly as they would for internal staff, making them visible directly on the schedule. Your schedulers and managers will know exactly who occupies a shift regardless of whether they are internal staff or external resources.
When additional resources become available for deployment or if a unit or department requires more staff assistance than usual, schedulers can simply add capacity to the schedule with the ad hoc shift functionality in Logibec Scheduling & Analytics to add shifts to an already posted schedule. Resources can be assigned directly to the newly added shift, and the system updates the schedule in real-time, always providing facilities with up-to-date schedule information.
Logibec Scheduling & Analytics ensures the staff schedules of your long-term care facility are flexible enough to adapt to constant changes, such as the management of external resources, and are fundamentally strong and resilient to the evolving needs of resident and patient care.
