If anything turns me off of ever aspiring to positions of leadership or management, is the four letter word BUDGET. I learned, today, that the budget is something that Dave must think about on a daily basis. Each morning his secretary and right hand, Elaine, bring him a report of the employee hours. It lists how many hours each employee is allotted each pay period, how many they are working that day, and how many hours they are scheduled for the day. The purpose of the report is to help him stay on budget in the area of staff salary.
The topic of staff hours was a hot button issue today. the budget from the previous week showed that UVOC Surgical Center was 5 FTEs over budget. Before we could get anywhere, Dave had to explain to me what an FTE is. One FTE is worth 40 hours, so it is equal to one full time employee's hours. This means that for the week prior, the surgical staff had worked 200 extra hours. Not a good thing. Elaine came in and she, Dave, and I went over the prior weeks schedule to locate where the extra hours were worked, as well as the schedule for the coming month. It was really interesting and educational to see the process in motion. We found that one place a lot of time was being wasted was in the department of the anesthesia techs. On the days that there is a short shift, one tech comes into relieve another one. Time was being lost because the on coming tech was not as fast as they could changing into their green scrubs and getting report as quickly as they could. Then, too much chit-chatting was happening during report. Lastly, the leaving tech was not as quick as they could be in changing back into their street clothes and clocking out. After this was determined, Dave called the anesthesia techs into his office and had a short huddle to explain the situation and ask them all to do better.
So, today I saw just one aspect of the budget and staying within it. I'm sure there will be other opportunities to learn more....lots more.
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