RT Facility Coverage Protocol
When calling off for your regular schedule:
How many days are we in the facility? Are you planning on making up the lost day on another day that same week?
Should we allow this, should be our decision, or rule. If we cannot find a replacement, you need to make these hours up within that week (On another unscheduled day) but best case scenario is we cover the facility for the scheduled day with another RT, as to not reward call offs with being able to get your hours anyway.
Is the facility ok with this/do they know of the change?
Should be us, Scheduling, manager, Tanya, Etc. not the RT asking the facility. Lets face it, most RT’s have a good relationship at facilities and are very protective over other RT’s in their facilities, so can always spin it in a way so the facility does not need anyone that day.
We have contracts with the facilities for a certain number of days/hours per week. The facilities WILL be covered per our contract with them.
I think the schedule thing and matching time sheets to schedule which should go totally live August 1, and then get better as we go will help with this. Managers and employees can get weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, reports on their Attendance and/ or tardiness and Schedule changes. We can then set thresholds that they can change their schedule x amount of times in a week/month or quarterly. Can get tighter as we go. Also if they are late for the scheduled time, and don’t call it in, it will show up on tardy report. If they are supposed to work 8AM to 12PM and instead go in at 6PM at night and do not let scheduling know, the 8AM shift will show up as a NO CALL/NO SHOW. These can start loose as warnings, and get tighter as we put people on notice and make them accountable.
It you can’t make your schedule hours/days at a facility, let office know when you call in that you need coverage for those hours/or that day or days. If you are making a change to existing schedule for that week so that you can still cover it, PLEASE let the office know of the schedule change.
It is NOT acceptable to short a facility hours to accommodate your personal schedule. We have RTs in place for coverage specifically for this purpose.
It is also important to make sure that every RT gives some kind of “report” on patients when calling off for their shift. This will allow for smooth, consistent coverage at the facility. For example, when calling into the office, please let them know, “just follow pt’s in insticomm.” Or follow insitcomm pt’s and ask nursing/NP who is new to see.
This will have to start and end with insticomm, we need to put our heads together and figure a way to leave/get report from insticomm. We have to look at bigger picture of someone not only calling off sick, but walking out, having an accident, anything basically where we cannot speak to them again or soon enough to continue at the facility. Insticomm is what they all have in common, so we have to find a way to end the day and have anybody else be able to pick up the next scheduled day without missing a beat through insticomm.
Please complete the following questions and fax, scan, send through insticomm, etc. to Tanya. She will be the keeper of Facility Procedure Log.
Please send in a separate form for each facility.
Remember, this is being put into place so that we as RT’s can take vacations and have the time that they need for work life balance and to heal if ill.
Thank you VERY much!
Name of Facility:
Admin:
DON/ADON:
Main contact point person:
How is charting done?
Are there paper charts?
Where does the RT go to find new admissions?
Does the RT need an “RT eval and treat” order in chart to evaluate? Is there a special protocol that a covering RT would need to know? What days of the week do you go here on a regular basis?
How many hours are you here regularly?
All these questions need to be incorporated into Insticomm as a face sheet, let me work on this.
