MidMichigan Health is a medium-sized organization with a 250-bed hospital at its hub, as well as three smaller hospitals, including two in rural areas, located in the center of Michigan. It was all too common for nurses to be overworked at one facility but underworked at another. In addition, MidMichigan used about 100 costly contract nurses throughout its sites. The health system used three staff and nurse scheduling software tools, with each hospital running almost autonomously. There was no central way to find out where nurses were under- or over-worked.

The health system was eager to find a better way to balance the diverse staffing needs at its four facilities and provide incentives for those nurses who pick up shifts at different hospitals. The organization put an inter-disciplinary team together and began researching centralized nurse scheduling software. As the team did its research, it came across a unique staffing program that used point rewards to motivate staff to fill shifts which significantly reduced labor cost expenditures.

Incentives have been widely used to help motivate staff to meet the resource needs of patient care. However, with the pressures of today's competitive environment and rising labor costs, MidMichigan wanted an innovative and cost sustainable alternative to traditional incentive practices. To help ensure quality and cost-effective patient care, the organization was interested in a program that would help motivate the existing workforce to become an active part of achieving an affordable staffing solution. An incentive program based on point rewards seemed like a perfect solution to reward desired behavior in a cost-effective way that could also be expanded outside of nursing into the health systems ancillary departments.

Several leading healthcare organizations had adopted non-monetary point-based reward programs (much like the successful frequent-flier point systems of the airline industry) as a means of increasing individual performance while providing incentives that directly help to achieve staffing effectiveness goals. MidMichigan felt that by implementing a point-based reward program that was attractive and meaningful to employees, significant benefits and labor cost savings could be realized.

This case study presentation will provide a joint discussion by a health system Financial Analyst and Corporate Vice President of Human Resources on how they partnered with Nursing to implement a successful non-monetary incentive program. The session will highlight how the program improved communication through visibility and access, aligned the organizations workforce needs and interests, and reduced labor costs. The presentation will discuss characteristics for program success, budgets, specific operational efficiencies derived, tax implications, and other considerations that support the design and successful implementation of point-based incentive programs.