SUCCESS STORY: WATERTOWN AMBULANCE SERVICE
December 13, 2022
Providing Reliable, Around-the-Clock Medical Services to the Community
When understaffing is more than an inconvenience
The Town of Watertown Ambulance Service Inc. operates with about 30 paid and 15 volunteer medical assistance providers, ready to respond to the medical needs of the community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The team consists of both professionals and volunteers that provide pre-hospital medical care as well as training and education to the citizens of Watertown and surrounding areas. Moreover, the staff provides support on request for concerts, sporting events, and other social gatherings taking place within the community. Over the years, Watertown Ambulance has grown into one of the county’s leading EMS teams, dedicated to continued growth, education and unquestionable reliability.
Before Humanity, managers created staff rosters using pen and paper and then transferred that data into Google Calendar. It was inefficient, considering the amount of time required to not only create schedules, but also to maintain them, manage shift trade requests, and make corrections and iterations necessary each week. Managers spent nearly a quarter of their work weeks dealing with nothing but scheduling. Understaffing was also a huge issue, one that an emergency medical institution cannot afford to have.
Moreover, the shift creation and maintenance process at this service is more complex than most businesses, considering that they not only have two locations, but also a mix of professional and volunteer employees who all have different skill sets and availability. Without up-to-date information on employees, it was very challenging for Watertown Ambulance Service to offer citizens reliable aid around the clock.
Related Content: 6 Reasons Healthcare Organizations Need Demand-Driven Scheduling
Using a paper calendar to create schedules costs more than a quarter of our managers’ time.
Before Humanity, managers created staff rosters using pen and paper and then transferred that data into Google Calendar. It was inefficient, considering the amount of time required to not only create schedules, but also to maintain them, manage shift trade requests, and make corrections and iterations necessary each week. Managers spent nearly a quarter of their work weeks dealing with nothing but scheduling. Understaffing was also a huge issue, one that an emergency medical institution cannot afford to have.
Moreover, the shift creation and maintenance process at this service is more complex than most businesses, considering that they not only have two locations, but also a mix of professional and volunteer employees who all have different skill sets and availability. Without up-to-date information on employees, it was very challenging for Watertown Ambulance Service to offer citizens reliable aid around the clock.
Understaffing, a 24/7 medical service’s nightmare, has become a worry of the past.
Trevor Perry, Director of Operations, decided that manual scheduling was no longer a viable option and that serious changes needed to be made for the scheduling process to become more efficient and reliable. Implementing Humanity enabled the team to save five to six hours on a weekly basis—time that can be used to focus on other aspects of job that can further improve the way the ambulance serves its community.
There is a number of Humanity features that the Watertown Ambulance Service uses daily and can no longer see themselves without. Employees can now trade shifts independently, while managers are able to create open shifts that can be picked up by staff independently. Since Humanity is cloud-based, all scheduling information is updated in real time and available to managers and employees wherever they are. Humanity’s Time Clock has proven to be especially useful, allowing providers to clock in and out of shifts with ease and providing managers with an easy way to view accurate timesheets for all providers, overtime included.
The technical support is also brilliant! I’ve bothered them on more than a few occasions using the Live Chat. They answered my questions quickly and fully every time. With Humanity, I found exactly what I had been looking for and at a perfect price point.