IBM workforce planning solution for Qld. Hospitals

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 17 June 2009 10:22

Business IT - Technology

The Mater Healthcare Group has deployed IBM’s Cognos workforce planning solution in its seven Brisbane hospitals where it employs 7,000 staff and provides healthcare to 500,000 patients a year.


The executive director of people and learning at Mater Health Services, Caroline Hudson, said today that like many other health care providers, the Mater group had previously used multiple decision-support tools that used different sets of rules to measure attrition with no consistency, and “as a result, there was uncertainty and conflict when determining if the data was accurate.”
 
“IBM Cognos will provide us with certainty and transparency to plan for job role requirements – from doctors, midwives and nurses through to our valued army of volunteers.

“With IBM Cognos we have a 99.8 percent confidence in the data being robust. This will provide our organisation with intelligent, actionable information that drives consistent, timely care and sound business decisions that health plans need today.”

According to IBM, deployment of its workforce planning solution will give the Mater group the ability to better predict future demand for nurses, doctors and their entire health care workforce, “improving the provision of future patient care using IBM software for workforce planning and analytics.”

Caroline Hudson says “the power of the IBM Cognos solution enables us to be forward thinking.  We can now extract bottom-line data to spot trends which will then put us on the front foot to react quickly and adjust staffing as needed.  For example, in providing the organisation with accurate and informed attrition rates across the organisation, we’ll be better able to fill the talent vacancy pipeline in time to meet the organisation’s moment of need.”

Hudson said the decision to choose the IBM Cognos solution followed an organisational review of several industry solutions but “only IBM Cognos was able to provide the scalability and robust reporting, along with the essential implementation services, required for long term scenario planning and talent management.”
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