Hospital uses new solution for surge staffing

TORONTO – Michael Garron Hospital, a large community hospital, has implemented ARMADA (automated resource matching & deployment application) healthcare administration automation solution to help with staffing, resource management and deployment during the COVID-19 pandemic. MGH is using ARMADA, from hims.ai of Washington, DC, to manage redeployment of staff from departments with a surplus to departments experiencing a surge during COVID-19.

At its core, hims.ai addresses resource imbalances across hospitals and organizations by matching needed resources (staff with specific qualifications, availability, etc.) with surplus resources (idle staff). AI technology helps with the matching process. Users will set their “must have” requirements, optional requirements, and priorities for matching and let the system take over.

According to the company, the product’s algorithms automatically learn from matching behavior, and do auto-matches without human intervention. They can identify gaps and make recommendations based on matching history

In addition to ARMADA, hims.ai offers hospitals and medical facilities a wide range of pre-built applications to automate processes typically handled through spreadsheets, PDFs and other manual mechanisms – employee onboarding/off-boarding; PTO/LOA requests; IT security access requests; licensing/credentialing renewals.

“The true problem we were looking to solve was staffing the hospital in the middle of a pandemic,” said Taylor Martin (pictured), manager, clinical resource team and new nursing initiatives at Michael Garron Hospital. “If you’re going to be able to provide that critical care to patients who are sick, you need to have the right staff available and assigned where they’re needed. The problem that ARMADA solves at the highest level is making sure that we are adequately staffed and that the resources are allocated appropriately,” Taylor said.

Since many non-essential procedures across the Ontario healthcare system were halted to focus on COVID-19, MGH recognized the importance of optimizing its human resources.

As a result, some departments had a surplus of staff, while other departments providing critical care for COVID-19 were in high demand. ARMADA offers MGH a simple, intuitive interface where managers from respective departments can enter their daily staff surpluses and requirements.

The staffing group makes the match with a single click, automatically notifying all stakeholders – the redeployed staff, managers, etc. Historical information on all redeployments are captured in one place, and is readily available for reporting, optimization and payroll purposes.

“My group had the critical role of staff allocation. We were faced with a continuous flood of data and information across telephone calls, person to person interactions, emails, and Excel spreadsheets from surplus staff eager to help on the one hand, and scores of urgent requests for staff on the other. Add to this further communication for every allocation,” said Taylor.

ARMADA enables MGH to take disparate data inputs and bring them all together in a standardized format and an accessible and accurate single source of information. Staff have access to this information through a secure platform at a click of a button. This results in reduced data errors and avoids miscommunication, duplication of data and effort, and needing to communicate things over and over again to people.

“ARMADA allows us to view and analyze our data in new ways by taking data from literally a piece of paper into a database that we can filter, sort and analyze,” said Taylor. “It also improves internal communications, reduces phone calls, emails, and meetings because people can view their own data and get the reports when and where they need them. Instead of redundant, transactional conversations, we now have more value-added interactions,” Taylor added.

With its automation and workflow management capabilities, ARMADA is much more than just a database. It can not only collect and manage data, but it also can move this data across workflows and business processes. In addition, it provides real-time data transparency and visibility across the organization.

“When MGH came to us, we were grateful to be given an opportunity to help during this crisis,” said Max Ladjevardi, SVP, HyperOffice. “hims.ai was purpose-built for exactly this type of challenge, to help healthcare administrators transform manual spreadsheet and paper processes into automated online workflows which all stakeholders can access centrally from anywhere, anytime.”

He added, “Our technology handles the redundant grunt work, allowing staff to focus on critical decision-making, driving business processes and yielding better patient care.”

More about hims.ai can be seen at https://www.hims.ai.