Busted!

Is it a wee bit ironic that I received an order from Finance to attend the bi-weekly productivity meeting? Is it a lot ironic that I'm on the bi-weekly productivity committee?

St. Fozzie's runs a tight ship, productivity-wise. We hired a consultant years ago, to outline specific staffing grids for every single unit. If your ADC (average daily census) is 25, you get 6 nurses and three PCT's. You start with your regularly-scheduled staff and add or detract as necessary. If your ADC is 30, you get that seventh nurse. If it's 29, you don't. That sort of thing.

So every nursing unit and hospital department has these same staffing grids. The fixed departments, such as Housekeeping, Food Service, Security, and Administration, never change much. The Bi-Weekly Productivity meeting reviews any variable department and the departments that are over their staffing grid must account for their overage. They come before the committee and explain their circumstances and what caused the high staffing pattern. It's not as bad as the firing squad, but I always feel a tinge of empathy when EVOO and Nurse Jackie mercilessly drill the directors/managers with numerous questions.

Imagine my surprise when *I* received a summons to the Bi-Weekly Productivity committee.

Because I'm the "keeper of the budget" for Administration, I'm down in the books as the Director. Director of Administration. It's a hokey title existing only for the purpose of budget formation and accountability. Apparently, even though Admin is a fixed department with about 10 employees, we went way over budgeted productivity hours for the last payperiod.

So I actually had to go before the Committee and justify "my" low productivity in Admin! It was because we hired a staff physician, but it cracked me up to have to formally explain it!