Sanford Health to Deploy New AI System for Nurse Scheduling

Sanford Health is implementing a new artificial intelligence-driven service that aims to ease staff scheduling.

With the help of Flexwise, a software company, Sanford Health has created a new system to assist in scheduling, particularly for nurses. Sanford Health has been piloting the AI tool since April 2021 at its Fargo, North Dakota, location. It now has plans to expand to 68 other departments by mid-April.

The goal of using this service is to improve the scheduling process and thereby the quality of hospital care.

“The tool allows our teams to spend less time on spreadsheets and more time with our patients and their family members as well as help grow and mentor our nursing teams,” said Erica DeBoer, RN, chief nursing officer of Sanford Health, in the news release.

In the past, nurse scheduling was based on patient statistics from a year prior. However, with information skewed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the new AI tool called LAMP allows for a proactive approach that will analyze workplace activity to produce a schedule.

“We have many different things flying at us that we didn’t have three years ago when we started this. The beauty of this, is that it’s meant to be agile. The tool is built to be something that changes with us over time, and it’s not meant to be stagnant,” said Emily Buckingham-Carlson, head of enterprise clinical staffing and scheduling for Sanford Health, in the press release.

To develop the AI tool, various data was sourced, including statistics of previous years and leading indicators. The algorithm also takes steps beyond predicting to prescribe the best possible solution, increasing the quality of long-term planning.

Aside from enabling nurse scheduling a year and a half in advance, the health system also hopes that LAMP will increase workplace satisfaction, resulting in increased employee retention, better performance, and a higher level of patient satisfaction.

“When you stop to think about how we’re using data and innovation to help us anticipate staffing and patient care needs, it helps us manage not only the short-term but also look ahead so that we can shift resources, both HR with hiring but also how we guide our colleges of nursing and other expertise to manage what those needs might be for staffing,” said DeBoer.

AI-based scheduling has been known to decrease the likelihood of physician burnout. A recent study shows that following the implementation of AI-based scheduling, the physician burnout rate for anesthesiologists dropped 4 percent compared to five years prior. This was mainly due to decreased stress in the absence of manual scheduling, more accessible time off, and better communication.