3 Ways to Manage Staffing Data in Today’s Challenging Climate

by Sue Barham | Oct 4, 2021 | Business Intelligence, Financial Dashboards, P&L Strategy

3 Ways to Manage Staffing Data in Today’s Challenging Climate

We understand. Thanks to 18 months of a pandemic, there’s a widespread industry shortage of staff. Compound that with an impending federal vaccine mandate. Looming in the background, a federal minimum wage hike.

Yet the need for senior care services is higher than ever. Stringent infection control protocols and new procedures add to the operational complexity you’re navigating every day.

You’re trying to hold on to those who are the foundation of your operation by incentivizing loyal staff with overtime, bonuses, and wage increases. You’re adding agency staff to fill the gaps. These strategies are necessary to stay in PBJ compliance.

So how do you manage all this when the goal post is constantly moving?

One way is to laser focus on your data – and ensure consistency with your data collection, data representation, and data interpretation. Though you currently have tons of data, is it accessible in a relevant, actionable format? If you find yourself shuffling paper reports or clicking through multiple browser windows to find the information you seek, we can offer you a much better way.

By integrating your legacy software platforms into a user-friendly, drillable dashboard, Prone 2 Dream customizes how you view your payroll expense, timeclock data, agency expense, and even PBJ star status. You have actionable insight, all in one place, that you can decipher in moments. You can know what you need to know, and make decisions that positively impact your company’s profitability.

Here are 3 ways we can help you manage staffing data:

DreamCORE Dashboards are a prospective approach to managing profitability. We integrate your data silos to present green views of actionable KPIs. DreamCORE customizes reporting solutions by bringing the relevant data from the various sources together. Watch your P&L building throughout the month – Earnings Reports, Wage Analysis, Labor Distribution, Census, Reimbursement rates, Spend Down (Checkbooking) and Industry KPI’s such as HPPD, DollarsPPD, Overtime expenses…and much more.

The results? Data you can use – to zero in on your daily activities, find issues, course-correct, and meet your projected outcomes. (DreamCORE Dashboards are a comprehensive solution that include the 2 solutions below – Agency Time Tracker and DreamPBJ Dashboards.)

Not ready for the entire financial package? Start with one of these staffing-specific solutions:

Agency TimeTracker is a user-friendly app that enables the contractor to clock in and out at the facility. The data integrates with your in-house timekeeping system to provide an accurate daily staffing review. You have a true picture of your staffing hours for PBJ reporting and invoice management. At the end of the quarter, simply export your Agency XML file for easy CMS – PBJ reporting.

DreamPBJ Dashboards is a business intelligence solution that provides 92 day rolling tracking of your regulatory compliance data with visibility into your PBJ daily star rating. Continuity brings stability, and ultimately enables you to know what each quarter’s stars will be when you cross the last day of the quarter. Dream PBJ takes the mystery out of PBJ reporting.

We welcome the opportunity to discuss your unique challenges. We’ll help you wrangle all your data so it makes sense … while you’re running the race.

Choose a convenient time on our calendar by clicking here.

Or simply call: (469) 294-5233 or email: contact@prone2dream.com.

Senior Living Operators – Will You Meet Your Budget This Month?

by Sue Barham | Oct 2, 2021 | Financial Dashboards, P&L Strategy, Skilled Nursing Facility

There’s a nagging question in the minds of senior living administrators and department managers everywhere: “Will I meet my budget this month?”

DreamCORE Dashboards and the Dream Expenses App are the practical solution to this notorious problem – How to manage expenses with a census that fluctuates daily and a labyrinth of operational issues.

Dream Expenses is a simple, mobile app that inputs each invoice directly into your general ledger – “one-touch invoicing”. Easily select the GL code, and easily split the invoice if necessary, even between departments.

This practical checkbooking system updates your DreamCORE Dashboards with every entry. You have near real time access to department budgets that are auto-adjusting by SpendDown and fluctuating census.

The result: DreamCORE Dashboards take the guesswork out of meeting the budget. Each department leader has a departmental dashboard and knows exactly how much is available to spend.

DreamCORE Dashboards solve the problem of managing expenses against a fluctuating census, saving time and enabling confident, evidence-based decisions.

Book a live demo – Grab a spot on our calendar here.

Contact us today to see how easily you can manage your expenses and make data-driven decisions, when all your critical data is in one place.

Integrate Agency Nurse Staffing For Positive Impact

by Sue Barham | Sep 23, 2021 | Business Intelligence, P&L Strategy

Integrate Agency Nurse Staffing For Positive Impact

The new realities of managing skilled nursing facilities have brought the need for operational efficiencies front and center. The challenge of maintaining appropriate staffing continues as a number one priority – SNF clinical teams and supplemental agency nurses and CNAs are the conduit to the safety and well-being of patients and residents.

How do we find the balance between the existing, available workforce and third-party relief?

Many operators feel they are currently running with a bare minimum nursing team, and not by choice. The pandemic has exemplified just how tough it is to maintain a staff in a healthcare environment. For many SNF operators, it’s a feasible option to enlist outside “agency” nurse assistance.

Yet, the catch-22 of agency staffing is the need for the hours on the floor… but that relief comes at a premium. Compounding the challenge is reconciling the timekeeping, invoice management, and compliance in PBJ reporting.

The key is innovation, and an ability to manage the use of agency with clear strategic intent and financial responsibility. A proactive approach to managing agency nurse staffing provides resiliency and balance.

SNF leaders are looking for ways to have higher visibility into key performance indicators, the ability to act quickly based on evidential data, and to be more connected to operational performance in the facilities. Automation of routine tasks and integrating that data with overall company metrics achieves this flexibility.

Automation and Integration

Prone 2 Dream Technologies specializes in providing healthcare leaders with time-saving efficiencies and automations. Our DreamAgency is a user-friendly app designed to track agency hours – with a simple clockin/clockout right at the facility. When integrated with your timekeeping and payroll metrics, DreamAgency contributes to your daily data story and allows you visibility of the impact every day.

The data collected by the app integrates with the current staff analytics each day to calculate and display hours, rate, HPPD, and total expense – by pay period, by nursing role, by facility. You can quickly identify how much you are spending on agency staffing and the impact on your operation.

The analytic also displays timeclock data for your in-house staff – hours worked, overtime hours, and individual time card data by pay period. Having this intelligence all in one place enables evidence-based decisions and the opportunity for improvement. Plus, having agency nurses’ time integrated with overall daily data enables accurate PBJ reporting, and submission with confidence.

When integrated with your timekeeping and payroll metrics, agency data enables clear insight to your choices – whether it’s more advantageous to use agency staffing or whether these dollars could be redistributed to your own team. You can determine if paying overtime and giving pay increases to existing staff would be a better allocation of resources.

Lastly, DreamAgency tracking creates facility documentation to verify the invoice provided by the vendor.

The integration of DreamAgency data with your company timekeeping system provides daily visibility and insight into goals and performance. To learn more schedule a demo, email contact@prone2dream.com or call (469) 294-5233.

5 Tips for Agile Budget Planning

by Sue Barham | Sep 15, 2021 | Business Intelligence, Financial Dashboards

5 Tips for Agile Budget Planning

It’s budget planning season, the time of year organizations evaluate the past year and conceive a plan for successfully moving forward. It can be daunting, especially as a global pandemic continues. For skilled nursing and senior living operators, planning next year’s budget requires careful scrutiny, knowing that the effects of COVID-19 are still a threat, and wondering how to plan for the unknowns.

Many lessons have been learned over the past 18 months. Traditional “business-as-usual” budgeting strategies and processes need a new approach. Corporate financial leaders know that they need the ability to react and reforecast with speed and accuracy – on an ongoing basis. The agility to match resources with strategy over time can only be achieved with a system of green data. The knowledge of where your P&L stands at any moment in time is essential to making evidence-based decisions to keep the company on course.

The 12-Month Budget

Amid ongoing, unprecedented uncertainty, a detailed long term budget may seem like a futile exercise. Yet, the need for speed, visibility, and cost control remains. Budget planning becomes a balancing act of business strategy and resource allocation.

DreamCORE Dashboards are the tool to reimagine agile, strategic budgeting.

Delivered in dynamic financials, DreamCORE Dashboards provide green data, updated daily. This strategic, robust financial tracking system looks back historically to show not only where you’ve traveled but the road ahead of you as well. Your data, assembled chronologically, with the ability to scroll and drill down by department, eliminates the scrambling to find everything you need and the shuffling of multiple sources.

Ongoing Reforecasting

DreamCORE Dashboards offer predictive analytics with a “What If” feature. Want to determine your Housekeeping budget based on PPD? Simply plug in your desired PPD and DreamCORE will calculate the amount.

The pandemic showed us the financial impact of a wildly swinging census. DreamCORE Dashboards updates your census daily, and recalculates spend-down accordingly. Each of your front line managers who make spending decisions has daily access to their budget, adjusted by census. How much better could you control expenses when all front line teams are trained to contribute to the overall company financial strategy?

5 Tips for your 2022 Budget

1.Assemble historical data for the past two years

If you’re already using DreamCORE Dashboards, this work is done and your 2022 budgeting is well underway. DreamCORE Dashboards integrate your EHR, Book of Record, and Payroll/TimeClock systems into a relevant order for evidence-based decision-making.

2. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses from this data

While this can be an arduous task, data speaks the truth. With DreamCORE Dashboards, red flag anomalies in your data alert you daily enabling the quick action to get back on course. Weaknesses can be easily reduced in real time.

3. Convene with company strategic leaders

Senior management and your finance team have valuable input. Weave the business plan into the budget, strategize and decide how to address the inevitable unknowns. Determine new KPIs and how to pivot when needed.

4. Engage your strongest front line leaders

Essentially these are your budget managers. A large proportion of the spending happens In the facilities. Your front line has insight to challenges you may not be prioritizing. Learn from them for more realistic budget planning.

5. Book a live demo of DreamCORE Dashboards

Our current clients are breathing a sigh of relief knowing they have an agile system for spending management and cost control. The “work” of creating a 12-month budget is largely complete – an easy review of historical data, a relevant view and breakdown of revenue, and daily drillable access to every dollar spent.

Budget planning for a new fiscal year enables a strategic plan for managing the revenue and expenses. The budget provides a plan for all teams in the organization to follow. Yet, the past 18 months have shown us that a static plan is useless.

With access to accurate historical financials and predictive analytics, your budget takes on a dynamic reality. Ongoing forecasting, departmental budgets adjusting to census, year over year and month over month comparisons are the new approach to financial management.

DreamCORE Dashboards is the GPS to keep your business on course to success. Contact us today to get started – you’re just 3 logins away from powerful analytics.

SNF Operators – Know Your PBJ Staffing Star Ratings… before they post

by Sue Barham | Sep 3, 2021 | Business Intelligence, Financial Dashboards, Skilled Nursing Industry

What would it mean to your organization if you could watch the trend of your CMS PBJ staffing star ratings … daily?

Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) is the report used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to evaluate levels of staffing in a skilled nursing facility as it relates to quality measures. To determine the quarterly PBJ staffing star rating, the intricate formula calculates RN and overall staffing against census and complexity of the patients.

The formula, while intricate, can be a useful tool for SNF operators who wish to make a positive impact on their quarterly ratings. However, doing the calculations manually would be an onerous task. Filling out the quarterly report for CMS based on time clock data is complex enough without trying to manually figure the calculations.

At Prone 2 Dream, we believe there’s a better way – a prospective approach. By viewing timeclock data and census together on a daily basis, a SNF operator and their Director of Nursing can make evidence-based decisions when scheduling. Dream CORE Dashboards is a business intelligence solution that provides daily tracking of your time clock data, as well as Overtime Analysis, Earnings Reports, Wage Analysis, Labor Distribution and more.

By watching your DreamCORE Dashboards on a daily basis, you have actionable information to positively impact your PBJ staffing star ratings.

Missing an RN one day? Set your DreamCORE to alert you – so you can correct the situation before it becomes part of your permanent CMS record.

When you have access to your daily PBJ staffing star ratings and make data-driven decisions on a daily basis, you can:

> Optimize clinical staffing dollars

> Equip your team to stay ahead of timeclock data

> Gain insight on CMS adjustment trends

Daily visibility of PBJ star trends brings stability, and ultimately enables you to project what each quarter’s stars will be. DreamCORE takes the mystery out of PBJ reporting.

Contact us for a Live Demo.

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