Essential hospitals are at a crossroads. The demand for care is rising, making it increasingly difficult to anticipate patient care needs. Balancing resources across care settings to meet those needs has become more challenging in a rapidly changing regulatory environment. On top of that, hospitals must function with fewer staff amid a worsening workforce shortage. Traditional staffing and care delivery models no longer meet these growing needs, leading to inefficiencies, higher costs, increased safety risks for patients and staff, and delays in care.

A New Approach: Predictive Scheduling
A sustainable solution lies in predictive and prescriptive workforce technology. By optimizing how current resources are used across a scheduling period to meet anticipated patient demand, health care providers can unlock new efficiencies and thrive, even in the face of the nursing shortage. Predictive modeling techniques forecast patient demand and resource workloads, while prescriptive models ensure shifts are aligned to meet patient needs and assigned to the staff member with the right skills and competencies. This sophisticated approach enables multiple shift patterns, offering flexibility that improves staffing coverage.
Through this optimized process, each nurse is assigned to shifts based on availability, safety and care quality requirements, organizational policies, and their own preferences.
Customized Management
Essential hospital administrators want to manage their workforce their way, reducing the cost and administrative burden of managing their core staff, while improving care outcomes. After stabilizing internal workforce first, the schedule should be augmenting in the least expensive way, with recommended openings integrated into a workforce marketplace platform where administrators can distribute shifts and escalate openings to the marketplace, first prioritizing placements with any internal resource pools (e.g. departmental per diem resources, facility or organizational float pools), then sourcing to external resource pools for pro re nata PRN or external agency contract needs.
This ensures the most efficient allocation of staff, minimizing both over- and under-staffing and eliminating the need for costly contract labor except when necessary.
The Results: Better Patient Care, Reduced Delays
The result is a health care system that operates more efficiently, ensuring that patient demand is met at all times of the day. By leveraging predictive scheduling, essential hospital leaders can provide better patient care, reduce delays, and lower labor costs while improving staff satisfaction and retention.
Case Study: The Queen’s Medical Center – West Oahu, Hawaii
The benefits are clear. When The Queen’s Medical Center assessed predictive scheduling technology, the hospital minimized over- and under-staffing and improved patient flow and capacity while:
- Reducing schedule creation time by 77 percent
- Improving the frequency of safe staffing by 68 percent
- Adhering to 100 percent of required rules
- Increasing schedule flexibility, honoring 100 percent of paid time off and training requests and 80 percent of requested shift preferences
- Lowering labor costs by 8 percent
Most importantly, patients receive better, safer care, and nurses enjoy a more organized, less stressful environment. The ripple effect of improved efficiency touches every aspect of the care continuum, benefiting patients, nurses, and the overall financial health of institutions.

Overcoming Barriers to Innovation: Training and Adoption
Through more than 100 interviews with a diverse group of nursing leaders, Medecipher, a SnapCare Company, gained valuable insights into technology challenges and priorities. A key takeaway was that the greatest barrier to innovation in the essential hospital sector isn’t the technology itself, but the training and adoption process. Leaders face critically low staffing levels and limited capacity to step away from day-to-day operations and “putting out fires” to evaluate and implement new technology.
While new technology offers significant potential, essential hospital leaders will need new skills and training to fully harness the potential of advanced data-driven tools that support safe, cost-effective staffing and improved patient outcomes.
New Training Initiatives and Microcredentials
As the adoption of health care technology continues to challenge essential hospital providers, innovative training solutions are emerging to help overcome these obstacles. In states like Colorado, a new microcredential is under development through support by a Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade “Opportunity Now” planning grant, which combines leading-edge scheduling tools with training programs for health care operations leaders. In collaboration with Pueblo Community College, the University of Denver, and other partners, Medecipher will help health care professionals — both new entrants and experienced leaders — acquire the skills needed to maximize the potential of these advanced systems. This initiative aims to equip health care professionals with critical skills in data-driven decision-making, workforce optimization, and technology adoption.
In other states looking to address their healthcare workforce challenges, similar programs and funding may be available to support essential hospital providers. By fostering collaboration among educational institutions, health care providers, and technology innovators, these initiatives can help essential hospital organizations improve operational efficiency, reduce labor costs, and enhance patient care outcomes. As more states recognize the importance of supporting essential hospitals in adopting advanced technology, these programs could become more prevalent nationwide, driving a broader shift toward sustainable and efficient health care systems.
Ultimately, the adoption of predictive and prescriptive workforce technology is not just about efficiency — it’s a pathway to long-term sustainability for essential hospital providers. By optimizing staffing and reducing labor costs, facilities can enhance both patient care and staff satisfaction, while stabilizing their financial health. As the health care landscape continues to evolve, adopting these advanced tools allows essential hospital providers to stay ahead of challenges and deliver high-quality care. Embracing these solutions ensures that patients, nurses, and providers alike can thrive, even in an increasingly complex and demanding health care landscape.