Managing Staff Essay

Health care managers have many different roles in any health care facility. According to Chapter 9 of Health Care Finance, â€Å"The manager is responsible for seeing that an employee is present and working for each position and for every shift required for that position’. Managers have a role to understand and know how to use staffing measurement known as the full-time equivalent (FTE). The role of health care managers can vary depending on their position as well as the size of the facility. The role of a health care manager consist of many different things such as staffing, budgeting, scheduling, marketing, accounting, and organizing decisions that will benefit the facility and ensure that everything is effective. â€Å"Group medical practice managers work with a group of medical doctors and handle the budgets, billing, personnel, and patients†, (Role of a Healthcare Manager, 2010). Another role of health care managers is to be available at all times. Comparing Productive and Nonproductive Time According to Chapter 9 of Health Care Finance, â€Å"Productive time actually equates to the employee’s net hours on duty when performing the functions in his or her job description†. Nonproductive time is paid-for time when the employee is not on duty: that is, not producing and therefore â€Å"nonproductive.† Some things that will consist of nonproductive time would be holidays, paid-for vacation days, personal leave days, and/or sick days. Some things that will consist of productive time would be an employee net time or days that they actually at worked on the job. Costs Tied to Staffing Costing is tied to staffing in a variety of ways, because the health care field is a 24-hour job. In the health care setting you have staffs employees working majority of the day. Some employee work sixteen hours shifts, but shift does change every eight to twelve hours in many facilities. The role of a manager is staffing, and employees normally work forty hours per week. If the facility consists of eight hour shifts then the staff would normally work eight hour shifts five days a week, and if it is a twelve hour shift the staff would work three in half days to get forty hours. The Difference between the Annualized Method and the Scheduled-Position Method There are two different approaches to use to compute the staff full-time equivalent (FTE). The Two approaches are the annualized method and the scheduled-position method. The role of a manager comes into place when concerning the annualized method, because the manager would take the productive days and the nonproductive days of each employee and account them in the formula used to complete the hours. The annualized method is a yearly thing and it is calculated with the time the employee has worked. The role of a manager comes into place when concerning the schedule-position method, because the productive days and nonproductive days are accounted for when filling a scheduled shift. The scheduled-position method is a weekly schedule thing. It is important to have a staffing plan in any health care facility. It is important to have enough staff present for the quality of the residents or patients. A staffing plan can help to determine what staffs are schedule and if more staffs are needed to work. Having a staffing plan helpful, because this way every employee time worked are accounted for when recording productive days and nonproductive days. Annualize Staffing Annualizing staff is important in any health care facility, because it is something that the staff have worked hard for and deserve what they have coming to them. Annualizing staff is important because the staffs will be get days off such as Christmas, New Years and etc., and still get paid for it depending on how long they have been employed, because the annualized method is hours accumulated on a yearly method. According to Chapter 9 of Health Care Finance, â€Å"Annualizing is necessary because each employee that is eligible for benefits (such as vacation days) will not be on duty for the  full number of hours paid for by the organization†. The Benefits of Recording Productive and Nonproductive Time There are many benefits of recording productive and nonproductive time in health care management. One benefit of recording productive and nonproductive time is that it improved productivity and decreased non-productivity. Some other benefits of recording productive and nonproductive time are to presence-to-performance ratio, to keep a time log, to make a checklist of recoverable time, and to sharpen the saw. It is important for managers to have a staffing plan available to manage staff and keep record of all staff hours to avoid miscommunication. References T Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). Occupational employment statistics. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes113031.htm#ind Crainer, S., & Dearlove, D. (Eds.) (2004). The Financial Times handbook of management. (3rd ed.) New York, NY: Pearson. Tina Su (2010) http://workawesome.com/productivity/full-engagement-at-work/