Abstract
Over the past 9 years, Meridian Health System's Jersey Shore Medical Center (JSMC), a 502-bed tertiary care teaching hospital, has mastered an effective way to understand our patient population and assign appropriate staffing to meet patient care needs. As the first and only healthcare system in the country to have achieved 100% Magnet status system-wide, we believe our techniques have some validity.
Using a few easy tools and techniques, JSMC is managing patient care labor resources to reach one ultimate goal: To optimize staffing that ensures safe, efficient patient care, by standardizing the way we look at acuity. Now our other two facilities (Riverview Medical Center and Medical Center of Ocean County) are following in JSMC's footsteps. All three facilities are trying these "7 Methods" to maintain clinically responsible staffing levels while meeting tight financial goals-all with hopes of tripling the savings we have realized from JSMC's success.