Schey Podiatry

BIOMETRICS IN HEALTHCARE

A Solution to Manage Key Staffing Issues

A survey of private practice physicians conducted by Harris Interactive reports that 66 percent of physicians rank staffing issues as the number one challenge they encounter in maintaining and growing their practices. Detroit-podiatrist, Dr. Michael Schey concurs, revealing tactics he employed to address his foremost staffing concerns.

"Employee-related matters have consistently been my most demanding and time-consuming business responsibility," admits Schey, who, with nearly 30 years practicing podiatry and five busy offices throughout Metropolitan Detroit, has the experience to speak with authority about such matters.

Depending on size, location and patient caseload, each of Schey's five offices staffs between three and six employees. And, while "staffing issues" is a broad term that encompasses recruitment to productivity and everything in between, Schey says his priority has centered on effectively managing employee time and attendance.

"This is an area that is connected in some way to almost every other facet pertaining to the management of personnel," he contends. According to Schey and other physicians interviewed, poorly-managed employee attendance impacts scheduling, punctuality, accuracy of payroll and payroll disputes, overtime costs, time theft, accusations of favoritism, employee productivity, and morale – any and all of which may ultimately affect patient care. In point of fact, other respondents also indicated that dealing with such issues detracts both the doctors' and the staffs' ability to focus on core clinical matters.

In an effort to address these challenges, Schey turned to technology, investigating various employee time and attendance software programs.

"For years, we were relying on timesheet forms that employees would fill out by writing in their hours," explains Schey. This method, he says, presented numerous problems: "Sometimes I couldn't read what they wrote or misinterpreted the writing. Also at issue, was the validity of the information: Since the forms were completed from memory, I questioned whether the hours reported were those employees had been scheduled to work or, the number of hours that they, in reality, had actually worked – which can be significantly different and therefore, a cause of concern since this what payroll is based upon."

Schey also wanted remote access to each office to know who was or was not at work at any given time, believing this would help to make employees more accountable for their time.

Initially, he selected software that used voice recognition, but found it to be too slow, too complicated and too intrusive. After exploring systems that used other data collection methods, he settled on an application integrated with a biometric interface made by Count Me In, LLC, a Mt. Prospect, Illinois-based company that specializes in small business software solutions incorporated with fingerprint recognition technology.

"Having already experienced disappointment with my first choice, I wanted references and checked with several customers using Timecard Monitor," explains Schey. "The positive reports I got alleviated a lot of my concerns." He then purchased the product and entered his ‘second phase of due diligence,' testing the software at home before installing it at one office. Shortly thereafter, Timecard Monitor was installed and all five offices were using the automated system to manage and monitor employee time and attendance.

The data-collection device used with this Window-based application features an exclusive LightningID fingerprint identification engine that in addition to identity verification, ensures protection of privacy by storing only encrypted numeric representations of the print, which cannot be duplicated. All employees enrolled on the system use it daily upon reporting for or departing from work. With two finger-taps on a digital sensor, employees' identities are verified and their "in/out" times, recorded, all with uncompromised accuracy and without the use of cards or PINs.

As a result, Schey and other users report that implementing Timecard Monitor eliminates numerous key concerns including: buddy-punching (when employees ‘punch-in' for absent/tardy co-workers); time-consuming administrative tasks involved in compiling, collecting and processing timesheets; and, costly human errors that commonly occur during tabulations of totaled hours and other computations.

According to documented studies, businesses realize substantial savings by eliminating such errors and inaccuracies:

The American Payroll Association (APA) reports that manual calculations (adding and auditing) of employee time averages five administrative minutes per card, impacting employee productivity;

APA studies also conclude that the elimination of human errors in timecard calculations can save an organization up to eight percent of its annual gross payroll;

The US Chamber of Commerce estimates employee time theft (buddy-punching, extended breaks, tardy arrivals, early departures, etc.) between two and five percent of a company's annual employee earnings – costing American businesses billions of dollars each year; and

Based on studies conducted by the Robert Half Agency and the APA, the average employee steals 4.5 hours each week, the annual equivalent of six-weeks of paid vacation per employee.

In Schey's specific case, he believes that his ability to remotely view employee attendance records by accessing Timecard Monitor's reports from other offices inspired a dramatic and positive change among staff.

"Employees are more punctual in their arrival and more conscientious about when they leave," notes Schey. "There's a far greater sense of discipline and accountability. And, the fact that all of the time and attendance data is obtained with indisputable objectivity is a great boon for morale, which directly effects productivity."

Moreover, the system extends the convenience of remotely accessing each office's employee time and attendance report, providing the data Schey needs to process payroll from home or any other digitally-equipped location he chooses. And, with Count Me In's specialized focus on serving the small business market, Timecard Monitor's software is designed to seamlessly integrate with leading small business payroll and accounting programs, such as QuickBooks, ADP, PeachTree, etc.

For Schey and other healthcare providers, Timecard Monitor provides a simple and cost-effective solution to one of the industry's most prevalent challenges.

For more information about Timecard Monitor or for a list of physician-user references, contact Count Me In's Vice President Neal Katz at 800-958-8779.