Q&A: Weekend staffing

Q: What are the methods for hospital staffing on weekends?

A: There are several models for staffing weekends that are important to incorporate:

• Use per diems, so you do not disrupt the continuity of assignments Monday through Friday.
• Use regular weekend workers, ideally with some overlap on Fridays and Mondays.
• Rotate full-time staff to weekends, and stretch during the week for the day they are off. (In a   big hospital, this means that there will be people off every day of the week, with the other staff never having a stable caseload or workload)
• Rotate full-time staff to weekends, and fill in weekdays with per diems.
• Add 1.4 FTEs for every position you need filled on the weekend.

For more information, see Case Management Models: Best Practices for Health Systems and ACOs, Second Edition.

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