The Hidden Costs of Using Homegrown Systems for Time Studies
When working with hospitals and healthcare systems, the two most common methods of conducting time studies are either purely manually – think written timesheets – and the much more common “homegrown” system. Before purpose-built software was available, it was logical to ask the IT department to create a system to record time-tracking activities.
“Utilizing mobile devices for gathering time study reports dramatically increases submission rates, timeliness, and accuracy.”
A homegrown solution sounds good because initially it seems cheaper than paying for third-party software, and it’s totally customized to the institution’s needs. Who needs something fancy and more expensive, right?
The truth is a homegrown system has a lot of hidden costs, such as IT time and manual entry hours, and is quickly outgrown. At Time Study, a lot of our customers say, “We were using a homegrown system for a while, but it's not making things easier and it can’t do what we need it to!”
They’ve shared some of the major problems with homegrown systems. Let’s talk about each of them and then how third-party software can save you time, money, and frustration. Following are eight hidden costs of continuing to rely on homegrown systems:
1. Time-consuming to Run Reports and Extract Data
A big part of hospital administration is running reports for department heads, annual reports, and anyone else who requests them. At the very least, it requires information to be filtered and extracted on an ad-hoc basis. However, that process is painfully inefficient with homegrown systems. It’s typically a long process with many different steps, including requesting data from the IT department and often aggregating unstandardized data to piecemeal it all together.
Once you get a report, it’s just the raw data and the formatting can sabotage hours of your time. Administrators have to clean up the information and make it more digestible, which takes even more time. With Time Study, the process takes only a few minutes!
2. Risk of Lost System Knowledge
Often all the knowledge of how to use and troubleshoot homegrown software is limited to one or two people within your organization. As long as they’re around, people may see no need to write everything down or create standard operating procedures. Sometimes they get promoted into more demanding roles, so supporting this effort may lead to frustration.
However, if any of those critical people leave the organization, there’s a very high risk that all their knowledge will be lost! Even if they do not leave, the amount of effort needed to create documentation for the system is significant and could possibly require even more resources.
With a vendor’s solution, all how-tos and help documentation are available to everyone, and the data is fully audit-proof for years to come, so you’re never out of luck if someone quits or goes on a last-minute vacation.
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3. Leads to a Vulnerable Audit Trail or Poor Data Retention
Time studies are used to calculate reimbursement rates, so documenting the process at each step is essential so you can produce them during an audit. If you cannot prove that the person reporting attested to the submission or have logs showing when they submitted compared to the time period studied, that could make the audit an incredibly stressful time.
Furthermore, with homegrown systems, you need to ensure that the data is saved and segregated for many years after the time period that it covered. If your files get “lost in the shuffle” and are not properly backed up, then it will require an “all hands on deck” moment to locate and present them. With a more modern, purpose-built system, the data is retained as is all of the readily available audit trail should an auditor want to review it.
4. No Improvements Over the Long Term
“Build it and forget it” is often the motto with homegrown software, with no improvements or upgrades made for years (or even decades). The software doesn’t scale or enable growth, so although it may work in the short term, it can become antiquated within a few years.
In contrast, we at Time Study devote substantial resources to constantly improving our products and adding new features that our customers request. We’re all about empowering growth, not just maintaining the status quo. Homegrown software may not dramatically change or improve over the years, but ours definitely does! We continuously partner with our customers to incorporate industry best practices and modernization requests into our solution over time.
5. Not User-Friendly for Clinical Staff
To stay competitive, your institution has to implement technology that will integrate easily into a physician and manager’s workflow. Your colleagues who are being asked to do periodic time studies are a huge factor in having a successful, defensible process. If you don’t have a modern time study system, you will end up with lower compliance and subjecting a team member to endless follow-ups to get the reports submitted accurately and on time.
Homegrown systems lack some key features that are proven to keep the staff engaged and staying on top of their time study responsibilities. Modern systems have sophisticated reminders and alerts that keep clinical staff on top of the submission and approval process. Furthermore, they also have apps so your team can submit using their mobile device – a true game-changer!
Great physicians and administrators are looking for employers that use the best software, not a 30-year-old homegrown solution that’s stressful to use and does not give them the tools they need to do their administrative tasks well. Not only is Time Study a lifesaver for current employees, but positive word of mouth can attract new ones too.
6. Lack of Integration
Homegrown systems are typically a database to store information on the administrative “back end” coupled with a submission “portal” or smart form. These disparate tools often do not communicate with each other. Ultimately, the homegrown time study solution functions in silos—a fillable PDF document that needs manual data entry on the backend, rather than a single system that directly integrates all users. That translates into duplicate data entry from HR, payroll systems and reporting/analytic tools.
7. Long Wait Times for IT Support
You may have the best IT team in the world, but you have to share them with every other department, so getting help with your homegrown solution can take a while. Even if you only need help for a few minutes, there’s usually a long list of tickets ahead of you, so you could be waiting weeks to get an answer.
In contrast, using third-party software means you can email or call a dedicated support team anytime you want—and they’re often being timed to measure productivity and other benchmarks, so they’re incentivized to help you as soon as they can!
8. Difficult to Troubleshoot
Homegrown systems can quickly become what we call “Franken-systems” (and yes, we know Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster). Franken-systems happen when a system is overly customized: a fix here, an improvement there, some very specific tweaks over there, and so forth. It works, but precariously, and over the years everything becomes cobbled together, rather than one cohesive system. It may seem appealing to have the system completely customized for your unique institution’s needs, but that makes it extremely difficult to fix when there’s a problem because the problem is so hard to find.
With Time Study, our solutions are configured, not customized (coded), so it’s easily formed to meet your institutional needs while staying easy to change if anything goes wrong. We think a reliable, robust system that’s also relatively easy to troubleshoot is the best of both worlds.
Conclusion: Time Study Administration Shouldn’t Be Painful
Are you sensing a theme? Homegrown software is often less risky up front, but you pay for it in long wait times for support, painful time-consuming processes, and quickly antiquated features. Software from a third-party vendor like Time Study may require more time and resources initially, but the user experience is lightyears better, from easy-to-run reports to pleasant, efficient help and feature improvements you request to allow you to use it for years to come with much lower risk in the long run.
If you can relate to any of the above issues that we’ve heard from customers, you’re not alone. Maybe you’re using a homegrown solution that worked for a while, but now everyone is frustrated and it’s not meeting your needs. If so, we can help! Get in touch and let’s talk about how we can make your life easier.
