Question

You are the manager of a medical surgical unit and was informed you were over budget in FTEs based on the average daily census. What steps would you take to determine how to correct this variance? What departments or roles would you include to help formulate a plan and correct for the future?

Answer 1

FTEs is full time equivalent and represents no. of working hours a full time working employee completes. FTEs convert the workload hours to no. of employees required to complete the task.

Since, in this case there is overbudget in FTE variance, then it is important to relook at the no. of employees at hand i.e full time and part time. In case, the calculation is correct, that means one need to hire additional part-time employees to fill up the hours required. One can also check options for overtime for part-time employees without the need to hire additional employees. Each process can be relooked to see whether the estimated required time per person per task is realistic or not.