It’s funny how little things can impact us in big way. Something unexpected makes life seem wonderful. When an annoyance that you didn’t realize could be removed suddenly is gone, it just makes you happy!
I felt this way the first time we got a DVR for our home television. My wife and I don’t watch a lot of TV but we are both avid sports fans. All of the sudden, thanks to the DVR, we no longer had to stress about either making sure we were home to watch events live or try to tape them on a VCR and wait until they were over to watch. Now, when my son’s soccer game cuts into the first quarter of an Alabama football game, it doesn’t faze me a bit. I just start the game when I get home and catch up by skipping commercials. Life is good!
Hospital scheduling systems offer a lot of functionality in their solutions. Most of it is great and has some specific purpose or another. But every once in a while, a small feature will be uncovered that unexpectedly makes everyone’s day.
I got to experience this in person this week. I was sitting in a training classroom, watching our team teach a group of staffers and nurse schedulers on a new system. Midway through the day, we did a live example of a feature that sends out open shifts to employees via text message, phone calls and emails, and let’s employees reply back via the same medium to accept or decline the shift. It’s a cool feature that is part of a larger workflow process.
All of the sudden, as it sunk in to the staffers on what this functionality would do for them, they just got happy! The daily routine of making phone calls and trying to find staff to fill holes was about to be consolidated into a few clicks of a mouse. Unexpected joy broke out! This was going to literally save them hours a day in their job, every day. (Instant ROI, by the way…)
As we continue to look at the staffing office survey, we see pain points and issues and future vision – but all from a high level perspective. It’s good to remember that there are real solutions to some of these problems.
Sometimes, right around there corner, there is a small feature waiting for you to make a big impact.
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