Avantas Announces New Enterprise Functionality and Decision Support Capabilities for Web-based Healthcare Labor Management Platform

Avantas, a leading provider of strategic labor management technology, services and strategies for the healthcare industry, today announced major upgrades to the industry’s only comprehensive labor management solution developed by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals, Smart Square®. Originally designed to automate the entire staffing, scheduling, deployment and reporting processes for nursing departments, this web-hosted application is now equipped with enterprise-wide labor management capabilities for departments beyond the inpatient environment. Avantas has also enhanced the business intelligence and user interface functionality of the software, allowing large healthcare organizations to achieve seamless interdepartmental communications and alignment, cost savings and efficient staff operations amongst many other enterprise-wide benefits.

For details regarding these enhancements and how they will benefit Avantas customers and any healthcare organization interested in implementing an enterprise-wide labor management strategy, please see the full press release below.

Avantas will also be demonstrating these latest upgrades at the upcoming HFMA ANI conference in Las Vegas, NV from June 24-27, 2012 (Booth #1661).

Smart Square Adds Business Intelligence and User Interface Enhancements to Better Support Best Practices for Advanced Healthcare Labor Management

OMAHA, Neb. – June 5, 2012 – Avantas, a leading provider of strategic labor management technology, services and strategies for the healthcare industry, today announced major upgrades to the industry’s only comprehensive labor management solution developed by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals, Smart Square®. Originally designed to automate the entire staffing, scheduling, deployment and reporting processes for nursing departments, this web-hosted application is now equipped with enterprise-wide labor management capabilities for departments beyond the inpatient environment. Avantas has also enhanced the business intelligence and user interface functionality of the software, allowing large healthcare organizations to achieve seamless interdepartmental communications and alignment, cost savings and efficient staff operations amongst many other enterprise-wide benefits.

“In this dynamic healthcare landscape overwhelmed with complex legislation and reforms, there is a growing need for strategic labor management technologies and processes that ensure efficient operations across the entire enterprise,” said Chris Fox, Senior Vice President of Growth and Innovation, Avantas. “Our focus with both Smart Square and our consultation offerings is to help provider organizations achieve a much higher level of sophistication in labor management, and take control of their largest expense.  With our flexible SaaS-based platform, we are able to seamlessly release the critical new features and functionality that will help organizations achieve enterprise-wide labor management success to meet their patient demands.”

To ensure the company is always at the edge of innovation, Avantas implements a collaborative user feedback model, in which its customers can share strategic initiatives and suggest ways Avantas and Smart Square can help them achieve organizational benchmarks. Avantas’ innovation teams use this real-time feedback as the foundation for the development of new product enhancements and upgrades.

As a result, the company has implemented the following new features and enhancements:
Smart Square Enterprise-wide Scheduling and Staffing Enhancements

• Cross Cost Center Trading completely automates the schedule change request and approval process by allowing multiple manager sign-off.  This supports shift trades from employees in several cost centers within one hospital or across multiple hospital locations

• Task Assignment upgrades that identify interdepartmental staff tasks or “duties” allowing different department to easily identify additional assignments

• On-Call Feature that supports all departments with a dynamic, on-call scheduling process and enables self-scheduling for on-call shifts

Business Intelligence Advancements and User Interface Improvements

In order to make the informed decisions that build an efficient, aligned organization, Smart Square users need access to the right set of data at the right time. To facilitate this process, Smart Square is now equipped with:

• Financial Dashboard enhancements that track and compare targeted hours and dollars to actual labor utilization and costs for both fixed and variable resources; accept charge feed data and allow multiple indicators to support any volume type across the enterprise

• Administration Configuration Tools that offer greater flexibility for specific configuration needs such as scenario building with incentive strategies for open shifts

“We are confident that these updates will help healthcare organizations meet financial, clinical and quality benchmarks and enable a fully integrated approach,” said Fox. “Healthcare organizations are now seeing the tremendous cost savings that result from basic labor management process modifications and understand how such changes can generate major enterprise-wide benefits, including proven sustainable cost savings and more efficient operations, employee engagement, boosting the bottom line and helping organizations continue focus on delivering quality patient care.”

The Avantas’ innovation team also plans to roll out additional functionality later this year, including:

• Communication Improvements that will enable greater communication flexibility between managers and staff, and will support any variations of user types and roles and preferred contact methods while providing an even more simplistic user experience

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Module for delivering data on core metrics across the enterprise for objective and timely reinforcement of organization goals, such as staff not fulfilling their FTE commitment (‘FTE Leakage’), policy deviations, and staffing success rates

• Decision Support that connects KPI outcomes directly into actions that can impact results.   The enhanced decision support will drill into the specific area of concern and guide the user to specific opportunities for improvement

For more information about Smart Square, visit http://avantas.biz/healthcare-scheduling-software/.

About Avantas

Avantas is an Omaha, Neb.-based company devoted to serving the healthcare industry.  Its proprietary scheduling and productivity solution, Smart Square®, is the only comprehensive labor management platform developed by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals. Additionally, its consultation services provide its clients tailored best practice labor management strategies designed to drive substantial and sustaining cost and quality improvements across the enterprise. For more information, please visit the Avantas website at www.Avantas.biz.

   

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