To start, I would like to share a personal story that was the catalyst for our company to add the Flex staff scheduling solution to the Accushield visitor and entry management platform. Accushield was created in 2013 with senior living communities in mind to create a technology solution committed to providing a level of safety and protection that had previously not existed. Towards the end of 2019, my father passed away after battling leukemia, and my wife Kristi and I were entrusted with managing two Assisted Living and Memory Care communities that he owned and operated.
Like many of you, Kristi and I worked tirelessly during the course of the pandemic to ensure the safety and well-being of our residents and patients, including making certain that our facilities were adequately staffed – even if it meant using staffing agencies. The percentage utilization of staffing agencies to fill open shifts began to skyrocket in our communities as CNAs and other frontline workers opted for the flexibility that app-based agencies offered. We realized that we needed to fundamentally change how we approached staffing in order to find a solution that allowed us to compete for critical personnel.
One of our conclusions was that we needed to evolve and offer a “gig-friendly” scheduling platform to our staff and potential new hires. We researched what other organizations were doing and talked to individual healthcare companies like Bickford, Schlegel Villages, and Amica, who had solved their staffing challenges using a technology provided by Flex. Using Flex’s system’s simple user interface and clear reporting, these companies offered both traditional and fully flexible staffing opportunities, including the formation of internal agencies. The result benefitted all parties – existing staff, potential hires, and the healthcare facilities. Staff and potential hires enjoyed having better visibility and more control over their schedules, while facilities experienced dramatic improvement in employee retention, scheduling workloads, and agency spending.
In early 2023, Accushield completed an integration of the Accushield system with Flex’s software platform. The resulting system, Accushield Flex, offers our customers the unique combination of Flex’s robust, flexible, and gig-friendly staff scheduling solution with Accushield’s kiosk-based visitor/vendor management and time and attendance platform. Accushield has exclusive rights to Flex for all healthcare entities in the United States.
Based on my personal experience and feedback from others, the Flex solution has proven its effectiveness in resolving the most daunting staffing challenges faced by the Senior Living, Skilled Nursing, and Hospital industries. This is precisely why we have integrated this technology into the Accushield platform.
—Charles Mann, Founder & CSO, Accushield