BJC HealthCare
Streamliming shift scheduling for nurses
To combat the huge cost of nurse turnover and shift vacancies, I joined BJC Flex to reduce friction in shift scheduling, filling 700,000+ hours of open shifts and saving $3.5M+ in operating expenses within a year.
To combat the huge cost of nurse turnover and shift vacancies, I joined BJC Flex to reduce friction in shift scheduling, filling 700,000+ hours of open shifts and saving $3.5M+ in operating expenses within a year.
helping to design a fully custom-built app for nurses
The volume of unpicked-up work shifts are high at BJC due to nursing shortage. What makes it worse is that, through our observation, open shift scheduling requires multiple actions, platforms, and back-and-forth communication between nurses and nurse managers.
As one of the designers of BJC Flex, my goal is to make open shift scheduling easier for nurses while giving them the agency to pick up shifts they want, thereby incentivizing them to stay.
multiple attempts at the right way of communication
One of the biggest initiatives I took in this project was to find the right way for nurse managers to communicate to their nurses about open shifts.
Normally, nurse managers would call their floor nurses one by one to see if they would like to pick them up when open shifts appear. If not, they might call nurse managers from other floors to see if they have any extra hands.
I took lead in designing and pushing forward the launch of a messaging tool as part of BJC Flex. The tool focuses on three things:
- Allowing nurse managers to notify nurses efficiently when and what shifts are available, or when there is a specific shift needing immediate help.
- Allowing nurse managers to target recipients who are more likely to respond yes, especially when they know the nurses' routine better or know some nurses prefer working together.
- Avoiding alert fatigue.
reducing mistakenly scheduled shifts
Besides working on new ideas, I also had fun improving existing features based on nurses' requests throughout my time at BJC. Some turned out to be appreciated, some didn't but helped us better learn the prioritization of desirability.
For example, one of the successful improvements we made was to reduce error in mistakenly signed up shifts.
behind the scenes
the result
hours of extra shift picked up through BJC Flex, as of January 2024.
reduced annual operating expenses on travel nurses.
average monthly active users from the caregiving teams.
messaging tool into pilot phase. (I was proud of this the most!)
what nurses need to work virtually