R415--RFI - Sources Sought

STATEMENT OF WORK

Nurse Labor Management & Staff Scheduling System and Implementation

Background

Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago, IL requires an automated scheduling and staffing process that will provide decision support for staff assignments based on objective and variable data; improve patient care by matching nursing competencies to required needs; allows self-scheduling options to nursing providers and data for outcome measurements. This will enable the Office of Nursing Service to create strategic plans based on retrievable and accurate data, using a comprehensive and systematic accounting of nursing workload, staffing requirements and scheduling needs to meet federal law and other regulatory requirements. Currently the hospital is using the Acustaf Staff Scheduling Software.

Requirement

Staff Scheduling not only involves staff planning, but also scores of managerial tasks including adherence to directives limiting hours of work in a given time period. This system must allow Jesse Brown to accurately account for time and pay in accordance to defined payment schedules. Nurses functioning as managers must have the flexibility to determine the appropriate nursing staff to meet patient care needs while considering a constellation of important variables, including the following: scheduled leave, unscheduled leave, education, experience, orientation, temporary staff on the unit, acuity of patients, acuity on a particular shift, physical layout of the unit, availability of hospital resources, technology on the unit, and unit volatility (such as the number of admissions, discharges and transfers).

Objective

There is a need for an acuity/patient classification system to match the changing care needs of the patients to the appropriate staffing level based on the patient condition and the amount of nursing required to manage the care of each patient.

Hospital based staffing requires 24-hour coverage per day, 7 days a week. Nursing staff work a variety of shifts that require an hourly rate increase, while contract/agency and travel nurses all have different compensation requirements. Therefore, a Staff Scheduling system needs to accurately correlate and calculate time and cost by work unit, nurse's type, pay variables and nursing hours per patient day.

Nurse executives need data to plan for current and future staff needs and costs; this system gives them the tools to help manage their workforce. Multiple standardized reports are needed as well as the ability to create ad hoc reports.

Scope

An integrated system and automated data extraction tools are necessary to effectively assign staffing resources and monitor standards of care. This system will pull from systems that already have the data stored to avoid duplicate effort and to feed the other downstream data systems. The primary use of the system will be Staffing Scheduling, so managers can coordinate schedules, capture data, produce reports, and coordinate work assignments to meet patient care needs.

Tasks or Requirements

Provide a Labor Management and Staff Scheduling Software program that provides:

Appropriate response to the fluctuations in patient census and acuities by using embedded decision support tools.

Adequate staffing levels based on patient acuity and other care related variables.

Collection of nationally comparable hours per patient day (HPPD) data.

Collection of data to prepare staffing reports, develop strategic plans and improve hiring practices.

Compliance with public law and other regulatory mandates for staffing regulations and monitors.

Ability to consolidate multiple administrative needs in one package (licensure, certifications, emergency notifications, etc.) Generation of predefined and adhoc reports.

Self-scheduling ability (major nursing satisfier).

Accurate accounting of contract/agency nursing utilization. Success factors: production of accurate HPPD data.

Provide annual training (2-3 days) to managers (up to 50 students) on how to use the software.

Provide Help Desk support 24 hours per day, and emergency support within 3 hours of notification.

Provide and apply automatic upgrades to Jesse Brown system in real-time whenever upgrades are made to the scheduling and labor management system.

System Salient Characteristics. The software system shall have the following:

An HL7 interface with Vista that brings in real-time Admit, Discharge, and Transfer information; as well as Daily Bed Census data, Human Resources Personnel information and Fiscal data related to labor costs.

Demographic Tracking tools: maintains employee contact/ emergency contact information. Maintains employee-preferred method of communication.

Staffing Scheduling Tools

Maintain prospective schedules.

Audit Trails for changes to the system

Schedules can be created in advance

Allow staff to make themselves available for overtime.

Proficiency System: Ability to staff and maintain repositories of anecdotal notes for proficiency input, specialty certification tracking, licensure tracking, education (all degrees earned) tracking, skill based competencies tracking, ACLS/131.5 tracking, continuing education tracking. Tools for staff to self- report professional portfolio.

Rule engines to facilitate scheduling: Apply regulations hour limits, time off requirements, staffing ratios, etc) as they apply to individuals being scheduled to work:

Apply union requirements stored in the system to create staffing schedules.

Apply Veterans Health Administration payroll rules and regulations for timekeeping within the scheduling system.

Use staff preferences to create staffing schedules.

Match competencies to staffing needs. Match nursing staff with patient needs across the system while maintaining balanced patient workloads

Apply unit preference to competencies, e.g. ICU nurses are ACLS certified.

Apply permanent schedules requests to when generating schedules.

Apply rotating shifts rules when generating schedules.

Capabilities to accommodate scheduling changes based on patient census scheduling. Apply patient acuities to staffing needs

Track hours per patient day

Generate alternate work schedules

Capability to allow or restrict swapping unit assignments based on competencies.

Capabilities to restrict overtime assignment based on regulations

Predict staffing needs based on previous trends (e4g. high surgery days)

Provide functionality to maintain disaster preparedness (notifications and call backs).

Communication Tools:

Creates a personalized web-based dashboard for all stakeholders

Based for employee access

Web-based for managers access for staff bidding

Staff bidding on open positions (Staff to staff communication, e.g. to swap shifts)

Exchange shifts between co-workers

Alert applicants for checking status

Produce reports for long-term strategy for hiring staff.

Training/Implementation

Vendor to provide on-site training at each facility to super users on general functionality, staff scheduling for end-users, and management reports for resource analysis.

Vendor to provide virtual quarterly seminars on systems updates and scheduling tools to facility users

On-site implementation of the system is required as follows:

Project Definition

Establishing Project Goals

Assigning Project Roles & Workgroups

Define Interfaces

Workload

Define and Document Existing Workflow Processes

Label configuration of job codes and units and leave schedules

Present Projections for Workflow Process

System Configuration

System Administrator Training

Security Configuration

Workload and Unit Budget

Validate Interface Data

User Training

Pilot Unit Training

User Training

System-Wide Project Role Out

Employee Access

Position Tracking

Courses and Consultation

Staffing Methodology Class

Executive Analytics Class

Reports Workshop

Data Mining & Scorecards

Set Up Alerts

Government-Furnished Equipment and Government-Furnished Information. None

Security. Vendor will not have access to employee or patient information.

Place of Performance:

JESSE BROWN VAMC

820 S Damen Ave

Chicago, IL 60612

Hours of Operation.

Program of operation is 24/7 for 365 days.

All work and training of staff in how to use software or any updates will be scheduled in advance with the COR on a mutually agreed upon date and time.

Emergency services including system updates shutdowns shall be coordinated through the COR. Contractor must be available to perform emergency services within 3 hours of notification.

Federal Holidays observed by the VAMC are:

New Years Day Labor Day

Martin Luther King Day Columbus Day

Presidents Day Veterans Day

Memorial Day Thanksgiving Day

Independence Day Christmas Day

And any other day specifically designated as a national holiday by the President of the United States.

Period of Performance.

BASE YEAR: April 1, 2020 March 31, 2021

OPTION YEAR ONE: April 1, 2021 March 31, 2022

OPTION YEAR TWO: April 1, 2022 March 31, 2023

OPTION YEAR THREE: April 1, 2023 March 31, 2024

OPTION YEAR FOUR: April 1, 2024 March 31, 2025