Oakwood Healthcare System Chooses ShiftWise to Manage Staff

Oakwood Healthcare System Uses ShiftWise to Manage Internal Staff and Suppliers

ShiftWise, the nation's leading provider of online healthcare staffing management services, today announced that Oakwood Healthcare System is using the ShiftWise service to centrally manage its internal supplemental contingency pool as well as their external staffing agencies. Staffing approximately 5,000 hours per week at all four of Oakwood's acute care hospitals and 38 ambulatory facilities is now centralized with the ShiftWise service.

Oakwood Healthcare System serves 35 communities in the Detroit area and a total of one million patients. To fulfill its mission of providing quality healthcare for patients, Oakwood selected ShiftWise to streamline staffing procedures in order to effectively manage contingent workers as well as many of its 9,800 internal employees. Before using the ShiftWise service, the majority of staff was procured from agencies. Today, more hours are booked with ShiftWise than from all 20 agencies Oakwood uses, combined.

ShiftWise has also enabled Oakwood to better leverage its internal staff resource pool to fill available shifts. By providing its staff nurses with the ability to book shifts online before turning to staffing agencies, Oakwood has experienced a dramatic decrease in agency use, which saved the organization $1.2 million in 2006 alone.

"As our supplemental staffing needs consistently grew, Oakwood recognized that there had to be a better way to unite the disjointed staffing processes at all of our facilities," said Barbara Medvec, chief nursing officer for Oakwood Healthcare, Inc. "After a thorough investigation of different solutions, we chose the ShiftWise service because of the unmatched flexibility it provided. In addition to effectively managing internal and external pools and closely tracking how staff is allocated and utilized, we are impressed by the ease of communication between finance, accounts payable, agencies and hospitals that the system offers."

"Oakwood is a leading healthcare system that puts priority on staffing in order to best serve the patient community," said Jason Lander, vice president of business development at ShiftWise. "We hope the service continues to be useful for them in saving time and money so hospital staff can shift focus completely to delivering the exceptional patient care for which they are known instead of wasting time with faxes, calls and emails."

The ShiftWise service is an alternative solution to costly, complicated processes often in use for supplemental medical staffing. The intuitive Web-based interface lets users fill supplemental medical shifts easily and efficiently, while allowing hospitals to consolidate staff search, booking, billing and record-keeping.

About Oakwood
Oakwood Healthcare System is a comprehensive regional network of hospitals, healthcare centers, skilled nursing centers and related healthcare facilities. Oakwood has a medical staff of more than 1,200 doctors, and provides service to more than 1.2 million people in 35 southeastern Michigan communities.

Oakwood's specialty services include women's and children's health (including high-risk obstetrics and neonatal care), geriatrics, emergency care, cancer care, surgery, cardiology and other specialties.

Oakwood Hospital & Medical Center was recently named one of the top 100 cardiology programs in the nation for the seventh time in eight years. Oakwood is affiliated with the schools of medicine at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan and is a member of the University of Michigan Cancer Center Network. With more than 9,000 associates, Oakwood is the second largest employer in suburban Wayne County.

About ShiftWise
Founded by healthcare staffing professionals, ShiftWise delivers a more efficient way for hospitals and other healthcare providers to quickly and efficiently find and book supplemental healthcare workers. The Web-based ShiftWise service provides hospitals with an unprecedented level of control over their staffing processes, consolidating staff search, booking, billing and record-keeping into a single easy-to-use interface. Based in Portland, OR., ShiftWise provides automated staffing management technology to hundreds of healthcare organizations and multiple state hospital associations nationwide. To learn more about ShiftWise call 866-399-2220.