Infor has announced the availability of Infor Clinical Science, part of the Infor Workforce Management suite and strengthening the Infor healthcare solution portfolio. The solution is initially only available in North America. There is no indication when, or even if, it will be available in EMEA, where Infor is looking to expand its healthcare footprint.
The new solution takes the data already available on the patient’s Electronic Medical Records (EMR) held by Infor and analyses patient needs. It calculates the workload required for each patient, analysing tasks and workload directly and indirectly. Business leaders can thus create and adjust work schedules in real-time for each shift, unit or department.
It allows healthcare organisations to match the skills and availability of nurses and support staff to the actual requirements within the facility. This increases efficiency at a time when healthcare organisations need it most. A pre-pandemic study from the US Department of Health and Human Services indicated that the current shortfall of 100,000 nursing staff would only worsen by 2030.
Matt Breslin, Infor executive vice president and general manager, commented, “Because of the nursing shortage, nurses (and other healthcare staff) are often asked to work overtime by staying longer for a shift or picking up extra shifts. At times, this is appropriate, and many nurses enjoy the overtime, but this can also lead to exhaustion and burnout and create opportunities for errors.
“Leaders need to ensure they understand the schedules their employees are working and be protective of those who are working longer hours or picking up extra shifts to ensure they are getting adequate rest and the necessary support to provide safe patient care.”
“With this application, we are now able to provide decision makers with a complete picture of up-to-date patient and unit staffing needs along with their available resources, so each unit is staffed. This ensures employees are deployed in an efficient manner across the organization.”
Multi-dimensional scheduling
Scheduling healthcare scheduling is complex. Clinical Science takes into account the different facets of the challenge. This includes time, location, skills and a range of other factors, including:
- The personal needs of every patient using their EMR
- The proximity of different patients to each other
- The continuity of care, where patients may need regular checks every hour rather than a number every day.
- The skills, availability and workload of nursing staff
Ultimately, it allows administrators to allocate work to benefit patients and staff. The challenge facing healthcare organisations is that the increasing demands put further pressure on healthcare workers. This can lead to burnout. It further exacerbates the staff shortages in the industry.
The solution also provides insight into staff shortages so that extra resources can be drafted in or transferred from elsewhere in the organisation. Infor claims that this is “the only solution that offers an end-to-end experience deployed in a single cloud solution for healthcare labor planning and tracking, including alignment with patient workloads and the assignment of patients to nurses to ensure safe, high-quality patient care.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
It seems likely this is another solution conceived and developed by Infor Labs, powered by Infor Coleman. Regardless this could become a very useful tool for healthcare organisations that already use Infor.
What is surprising is that the company does not appear to have pushed the solution in beta, nor had it gained a customer quote to validate how powerful this solution is. It will be interesting to see how quickly it is taken up and what benefits are seen. However, also omitted from the press release and not indicated on the Infor site is whether this solution carries an additional cost or is included within the Infor Workforce Management solution.
Clarification/Correction
The following was received from Infor to clarify some of the content above.
Brianna Zink, RN, MSN is the Senior Director of Product Strategy for Healthcare at Infor, stated, “Infor Clinical Science utilizes the GRASP methodology which Infor acquired in 2014 to measure patient and department workloads. Clinical Science is now part of the Infor Workforce Management for Healthcare suite of solutions, providing nurses and leaders with a single system to view and adjust schedules, make staffing decisions to meet current patient care requirements, and make informed nurse-patient assignments.
“Current GRASP customers appreciate that the methodology is focused on individual patient needs, permits enhanced staffing, and supports RN clinical judgement. Infor believes that offering this solution in the same modern and secure cloud environment as their WFM solution will help clients ensure their clinical staff are deployed in the most efficient way possible to meet the needs of their patients and will decrease time intensive and sometimes costly last-minute staffing decisions. “
This article was updated on 24 Feb 2023 following feedback from infor