Health Services, Internal Services Department (ISD) and Union partners developed a Deployment Dashboard to track the movement of 11,000 staff in response to the surge during the Coronavirus pandemic. A Registered Nurse (RN) Specialty Skills Survey was developed to identify additional clinical area skills to assist with the deployment of staff providing specialty care during the surge with COVID-19 patients and other emergencies at our four County hospitals. The survey provided an opportunity for the RNs to submit additional clinical specialty skills, including years of experience and their preferred alternate hospital work location.

A dashboard was developed to demonstrate the results of the survey, identify possible deployment based on staff home addresses in proximity to the closest County hospital, track staff movement (deployment) within and across each hospital and the ambulatory care clinics to provide real-time status reports for management teams to assist with decision-making and planning.

This project eliminated the manual process and allowed Health Services leadership teams to identify staff available for movement based on their skills and the specialty care areas requiring additional staff to meet the needs of patients and track the deployment status to ease the management of the emergency.

Creation of this database and the ensuing modules proved very valuable during the pandemic surge in the winter 2020-2021. There were over 1400 staff deployments (internal and external) during the winter surge. Despite the varying shifts/schedules, weekends and holidays, managing the staff in the system was easy as it was set up to allow real-time adjustments to assignments. Daily reports to executive leadership were simplified by eliminating much of the manual manipulation and real-time information could be provided immediately. The database allowed nurse management to view the staff with available skills and align them with the unit or the patients that needed specific care. The information provided trending and facilitated the analysis of the staffing needs of each hospital and helped to prepare them for future emergencies. All critical data resides in one location/dashboard, with an easy click on a tab, information about deployments, facility/unit needs, future deployments can be scheduled and viewed.