Our first Collaborative Authoring project together is creating a booklet for CFOs on staffing. Tell us what you think needs to be covered.

What do you think CFOs need to know about staffing? What can you share that would help CFOs understand the ins and outs of staffing and equip them for their role in achieving Staffing Excellence?

Policy experts from the Urban Institute has put together a nice report on the Nursing Workforce Challenge: Public Policy for a Dynamic and Complex Market (see http://www.urban.org/publications/411933.html)  Although not targeting CFOs or specific to staffing, I do believe the report is helpful and examines the  workforce today and historically as well as discussess future projections.  Additionaly, there are good discussions on the private (individual hospitals) and public policy responses to a shortage.  Last there is a publc policy agenda for moving forward. One important recommendation is to promote the business case for nursing.  Another important recommedation is recognition nursing in the team approach to patient centered, evidence-based care.

I would guess it would depend on the size of the booklet, as there is so much to cover!

CFOs should have a good background in the economics of Staffing and Scheduling, but how it is done and the environment it occurs in could use some illumination

One important topic would be the evidence linking staffing to patient outcomes and mortality  to underscore the importance of getting it right. Also this helps with the idea of not just looking at staffing as a cost to be minimized, but also that good staffing has potential for reducing costs and improving outcomes in the system. The 'revenues' from good staffing are often in reduced errors, reduced turnover costs, better patient outcomes such as reduced re admission rates and better lenghts of stay, increased satisfaction. These are often in a different spreadsheet than the personnel costs.

Another area that is vital to understand, but depending on the CFOs background is not obvious to them, is just how variable the workload in healthcare is, and how averages do not tell a large part of the story of what is happening. Discreet data is more descriptive of what staffing and scheduling is needed than 'smoothed' or averaged data is. Prepping them to think in these terms would be good

It is important to introduce the concept of flex and how to incorporate that into any staffing model

Looking at Staffing as more than just numbers of bodies. There is a lot of complexity in getting the skills and strengths matched correctly.

Much more, but these are items that I think are critical to have a more encompassing way of looking at staffing from a financial perspective than just things like overtime percentages and benefit costs.