Making the right decisions today has never been more challenging and critical within healthcare. Healthcare organizations are operating with increasingly tight margins and fewer resources than ever; just read the almost-daily news regarding the challenges faced in recruiting, training, and retaining top talent across the industry. Healthcare professionals, who fill various job titles and roles, are responsible for multiple tasks and projects, often travel between numerous locations, constantly are asked to do more, and get bombarded with data from multiple sources and in various formats. Making the right decisions requires information that is timely and consumable in an easy to interpret format.
Fortunately, there are analytic tools that provide a multitude of ways to assist you with informed decision making. Whether you are an executive, a clinician, a department manager, or in any multitude of other employee roles, opportunities abound to easily use analytics for decision support. Read on to learn how our next generation solution, UKG Dimensions™ Analytics, delivers insights instantly to your frontline and operational people managers so they can confidently make impactful labor decisions backed by data.
Let’s start with the basics
What is analytics? It is a term tossed around quite frequently with different interpretations and meanings within our industry as well as others. Webster defines analytics as “the method of logical analysis.” So, what does that mean? Webster also defines analysis as, “a detailed examination of anything complex in order to understand its nature or to determine its essential features: a thorough study.” This is helpful context. The healthcare industry is nothing if not complex, for the reasons we all know. And with UKG Dimensions time and attendance, data is stored in a single centralized repository that provides quick and streamlined access for labor data analysis.
Have you heard of the now-vintage game show “Let’s Make a Deal”? If not, do a Google search and then read on for a quick synopsis of the various data and analytics options available to you within UKG Dimensions.
What’s behind Dimensions Analytics door number 1?
The core Dimensions application provides numerous opportunities for delving into your workforce management business and has something for every user level. Home page tiles, dataviews (real-time simple ad-hoc reports or charts using a query), on demand or scheduled reporting options, and the ability for large scale data pulls for multi-faceted detailed analysis, are all available to you.
- For example, a lab technician can quickly review the number of exceptions in their timecard and take immediate action, analyze, and finesse their schedule to accommodate personal needs, and monitor their current balance of accruals for PTO, all rapidly from their phone.
- A pharmacy manager can rapidly analyze team hours worked by pay code, unexcused absences by employee, and focus on the top 10 employees with overtime on their device of choice.
What’s behind Dimensions Analytics door number 2?
For an even richer analytical experience, and to support operational leaders, Dimensions Analytics provides a set of UKG-defined and delivered key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as the opportunity to develop custom KPIs to perform real-time analysis across the business. Dimensions Analytics also includes the UKG Dimensions Data Hub, providing an opportunity to export and perform strategic analysis on large volumes of historical data using any BI reporting tool of choice for visualization of information.
- For example, a unit nurse manager can analyze overtime costs as a percent of total labor costs for their unit and focus on absenteeism challenges. They can easily investigate absence hours as both a percentage of actual hours, as well as the hours scheduled.
- A radiology director can scrutinize their early in/early out, late in/late out, and missed punch exceptions as a percentage of total exceptions and enact change timely where appropriate.
What’s behind Dimensions Analytics door number 3?
In these examples, we’ll go beyond Dimensions Analytics into UKG Dimensions Healthcare Productivity that was specifically developed for our industry. Formerly known as Workforce Dimensions Healthcare Analytics, this suite of analytical tools focuses on patient care labor costs, including daily and pay period productivity performance as compared to a benchmark or target. Examples of use cases using this tool are:
- A director of operating rooms can evaluate and monitor daily staffing plans and staffing decisions based on the actual surgical case volume and adjust up or down as needed.
- A vice president of nursing can monitor daily productivity trends and performance across all key nursing units, monitor staffing additions or reductions knowing they are backed up by sound data, and analyze pay period productivity trends compared to internally developed targets.
UKG Dimensions Analytics allows frontline and operational people managers to easily identify, manage, and optimize opportunities for labor cost savings and productivity, with KPIs, metrics, and thresholds created to help you stay on track with your business goals in real time. Add on Healthcare Productivity, which is embedded within Dimensions, and your people are able to manage in the moment with highly formatted daily trending and pay period trending reports that allow you to spot and take action on productivity variances as they pop up. In addition, organizations can configure and track healthcare-specific productivity types that allow it to align and report on productivity with volume and payroll impact for the full picture. The value of these analytics tools are proven, and given the current state of healthcare, a necessity for all organizations.
Learn more about UKG Dimensions and Dimensions Analytics on the following blogs:
