Scheduling part-time, per diem and contract workers consistently to the same unit or to the same residents has a “significant impact on consistency of care” in nursing homes, according to the author of a study published Monday in the journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.
Those “relatively simple changes,” said co-author Alan A. Scheller-Wolf, PhD, a professor of operations management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, “should also improve quality of care, and the satisfaction of residents, their families and staff,” he said.
In addition to Carnegie Mellon, researchers at Cornell University also were involved with the study.
The researchers analyzed data from more than 15,000 shifts worked by nursing assistants at three mid-Atlantic nursing homes over several months, comparing actual rosters with optimal schedules designed to maximize consistency. Then they compared the performance of the optimized rosters with the facilities’ schedules.
Assigning part-time, per diem and contract workers to a consistent setting, they found, in many cases reduced the number of nursing assistants caring for a resident. The findings, according to the researchers, suggest that a prudent scheduler might have some flexible full-time workers assigned with part-time care workers, and this could significantly increase consistency of care. Improving scheduling tactics could lessen the number of staff members with whom residents interact by up to 30% a month compared with the historical rosters, according to the study.
“Facilities should seek as much flexibility as practicable from full-time workers to allow part-time workers to be assigned more consistently and improve their overall inconsistency level,” said Vincent W. Slaugh, PhD, an assistant professor of operations management at Cornell’s S.C. Johnson College of Business. “The insights from our analysis offer a simple cost-free solution to improve quality of life for both residents and caregivers. Nursing homes that use more part-time and contract workers due to the labor shortage can use these insights to improve the experience of those workers.”
