In the flurry of conferences at the end of last year, one of the common threads that I picked out was related to the subject of centralized staffing offices. I mentioned this in Axsium’s video recap to KronosWorks 2014, but I also have noticed it elsewhere. Off the top of my head, I can recall at least three different conference sessions I attended that essentially had the same topic: “How we built a centralized staffing office from scratch in our hospital.” And there were other centralized staffing office topics too! One hospital talked about how they expanded the existing scope of their staffing office to include timecards.
[By the way, as an aside, as I write this blog today, I am realizing that I really want to create an acronym for centralized staffing offices and start calling them CSO’s. The only problem is: I have never heard this acronym used. Usually the people I interact with refer to it as just a staffing office, as I do too. But this is a prime opportunity for us to generate a new acronym and have it be accepted through popular usage! Next time you see me, make sure you managed to work “CSO” into the conversation with me. We will change the world!!]
Conferences are not the only places talking about staffing offices either. As I meet with hospital leadership around North America, that topic frequently comes up. And in these conversations, some of the same questions keep popping up:
- Should we create a centralized staffing office for our hospital?
- Do you have any ideas why our staffing office is not effective?
- What will future staffing offices look like?
So, as we look forward to AONE 2015, I am going to address each of these topics individually in blog form to answer some questions and hopefully give you ideas about what to do next with your hospital and centralized staffing offices.
If you have more ideas and questions over the next few weeks, send them to me via email at cflanders@axsiumgroup.com or tweet me at @FlandersChris. I will look forward to seeing you and talking about this more in Phoenix at AONE.
