healthcare - Time Management Systems

Tag: healthcare

27 Dec 2017

Why Long-Term Care Organizations Should Use TMS Attendance Enterprise

Long Term Care (LTC) organizations provide both medical and non-medical services to assist in meeting the needs of people whose self-care is limited. Workers provide both medical and non-medical care, and are subject to strict regulation. This results in the need for labor management that is both specific and accurate, keeping in compliance with federal, state, and local labor laws.

LTC organizations have several labor management challenges and priorities relating to these four primary personas, which are addressed by using TMS Attendance, helping ensure compliance, simplify budget management and generate an optimized composition of staff.

Ensure Compliance

Compliance is king. It is critically important for LTC organizations to monitor census and ensure proper staffing and care ratios. Most organizations still use spreadsheets to manage shift coverages, which can be extremely time consuming, cause inaccurate data, and lead to low CMS ratings.

Additionally, keeping a keen eye on employee certifications can be tedious, and if they are not properly monitored, can lead to penalties and put a halt to an employee’s ability to legally work.

TMS Attendance Benefits:

  • We provide a Monthly Census & PPD report that can automatically track coverage ratios and easily visualize where coverage ratios are below thresholds to highlight where attention is needed. 
  • Our system incorporates easy monitoring of employee certifications and visual cues to indicate employees who are approaching expiration to ensure action is taken.

Budget Management

Long-term care organizations rely on funding from Medicaid and Medicare, making it vital for a facility to remain on budget while simultaneously maintaining coverage requirements against census data. Capturing and reporting on direct care, non-direct care, and nursing staff hours can be a chore, and countless hours can be spent organizing shift totals to try and identify where changes are needed to help stay aligned with changing Census numbers. Additionally, shift changes and last-minute coverages can lead to increased overtime expenses if weekly hours aren’t closely watched. This can quickly drain your facility’s budget.

TMS Attendance Benefits:

  • TMS Attendance allows users to not only gain quick insight into direct and non-direct care hours, but users can also drill down into specific shifts, easily sort data and export the information to send to owners as needed.
  • We can help save time managing your budget by providing easy access to view where gaps or surpluses to coverages exist.  Intelligent decisions can then be made to reduce or add staff accordingly, and upon the need to add staff – avoiding scheduling employees who are approaching overtime.

Staff Management

Managing staff and attendance within LTC organizations has become increasingly challenging as the industry faces growing rates in absenteeism. For example, it is not uncommon to see absenteeism rates of nine to 10 percent for Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). Legal and professional standards now say that those absent employees must be replaced to maintain the desired standard of care. This leads to coverage issues, directly impacting CMS | PBJ reports and ultimately a facility’s CMS rating. The time needed to keep up with reporting, varying shift premiums, and callbacks is a burden.

TMS Attendance Benefits:

  • If you have minimum coverage requirements and find yourself understaffed due to an absence, our schedule coverage, along with Seeker for absence management, helps ensure coverage levels are properly achieved and compliance is maintained!
  • Seeker can automatically generate pre-defined substitution lists that are FILTERED to remove unqualified employees and match only the replacements with the required skills for the available shift.
  • Eliminate the worry associated with generating and submitting PBJ & CMS 671/672 reports.  Our solution provides this data with the click of a mouse, no need to manually calculate, simply download the file(s) and upload to the CMS website.

Learn more about how TMS Attendance Enterprise can help your facility. Contact Monica at Time Management Systems by calling (605) 306-5529.

16 Nov 2017
Security System Camera on Building

Is There a Gap in Your Security Plan?

Intrusion alarms (or burglar alarms) get less respect every year, while flashy video surveillance products garner the bulk of the attention in the security world. Don’t overlook the value of a well-designed intrusion alarm system when building your security plan.  

If your business is the unfortunate target of a break in, a properly designed and installed alarm system can minimize the extent of the inflicted damage. Strobes and sirens draw attention, and criminals don’t like attention: a 120-decibel siren and red and blue flashing strobes will make them nervous, to say the least.

The alarm results in an interrupted crime and can limit your losses to only a broken door or window. As a result, you keep your staff and business safe while keeping your insurance costs down. In nearly all cases, a monitored intrusion alarm system qualifies for insurance discounts, which help defray the system cost.

Better yet, you receive immediate notification when an alarm is triggered, and law enforcement is dispatched to the scene. This improves chances of an immediate apprehension and means that you don’t find out about the incident only after arriving at the office the next morning.

Intrusion alarms also add peace of mind and a level of personal safety for your employees in three ways.  

  1. If you have an employee working early in the morning or late at night, outside of business hours, they have the assurance of being in the building alone. The alarm keypad requires a passcode and does not let anyone in without one.
  2. When working alone, the employee can arm the alarm in “home mode.” This keeps the perimeter zones active while bypassing the motion detectors. Employees can move freely about the facility while the perimeter is secured.
  3. Panic buttons can be placed anywhere in a facility: at reception desks, in individual offices, at cash registers, and more. In the event of intrusion, an employee can summon help within the building as well as from law enforcement at the push of a button.

A properly designed intrusion alarm system can do much more than intrusion detection. These systems also let you:

  • Monitor building temperature and get alerts if frozen pipes are a risk
  • Monitor and set temperature alerts in coolers and freezers
  • Detect moisture if a pipe bursts, a toilet overflows, a sump pump quits, etc.
  • Perform a variety of basic building automation tasks (lock and unlock doors, control lighting, control thermostat settings, and more)

When it comes to intrusions, video evidence is important in telling a story after the fact—but an intrusion alarm can deter criminals before they get into the building. Don’t overlook the unsung hero of the security world!

Contact Jeff at Time Management Systems for expert advice in designing your intrusion alarm system.

14 Sep 2017
Word "Security" on computer screen with cursor hovering over it

Protect Your Business—the Smart Way

Too many businesses fall victim to employee theft. Protect your business with smart security solutions from Time Management Systems.

Even the smallest change can save money—or your entire business. Employee theft accounts for almost 43 percent of inventory shrinkage in retail, and 33 percent of business bankruptcies.

From professional consultations to completely updated security systems, Time Management Systems has what you need. Our experts will recommend the best security technology for your business, building, and schedule.

Then, our products ensure that anything you want protected stays that way.

  • Use controlled access for sensitive areas
  • Watch video from high-resolution security cameras—right on your phone or computer
  • Alert and dispatch law enforcement with intrusion alarms

Put your mind at ease when you put our products to work. Talk to us today, and we’ll help you get to a safer place!

14 Sep 2017
Judge gavel with books on table

Overtime Rule Appeal Dropped

The U.S. Justice Department announced on September 5 that it will not defend the Labor Department ruling for extended overtime benefits. The rule, which would increase the salary threshold that qualifies workers for overtime pay, has been on hold since November 2016.

The rule would have required employers to pay time-and-a-half wages to most salaried workers earning less than $47,476 per year. Such an increase would have affected more than four million workers, more than doubling the current overtime pay cutoff of $23,660.

Judge Amos Mazzant, who initially blocked the rule, stated that it “improperly focused on workers’ salaries rather than job descriptions.” The Restaurant Law Center, along with other affected groups and businesses, have stated that they will continue working with the Department of Labor to see that workable changes to the overtime rule are enacted.

14 Sep 2017

TMS Recognized for Top Sales Performance

Time Management Systems has been honored again for top sales performance and customer service. InfoTronics presented TMS with the second-place award for this year’s Dealer of the Year at the InfoTronics annual channel partner meeting.

“This means so much to us,” said Mindy Kroll, vice president of sales at TMS. “We have a great team dedicated to serving great customers, and we couldn’t have received this honor without them all.”

TMS has worked with InfoTronics, a national leader in time and attendance software development, since 1994. Together the groups provide time-saving solutions for businesses across all industries—including healthcare, education, manufacturing, and more.

“To us, this is more than an award,” said Kroll. “It’s a statement that, even though we’re smaller and more rural than most of the competition, our people make great things like this possible.”

About InfoTronics

InfoTronics, Inc. develops and provides time and attendance software solutions to organizations in North America. The company’s time and attendance solutions include human resource and payroll policies, workforce management, scheduling, benefit accruals, employee self service and kiosk, leave management, incidents and points, coverage budgets, and time and attendance reports.

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