Brockville General Hospital decreases paper costs and reduces time

ìRight from the beginning, Iíve always said that the Quadrant HR implementation is the best one weíve ever been involved with. It was an exceptional process and very organized.î - Ray Morrison, Manager of Financial Services

Organization
The Brockville General Hospital (BGH) is located one hour away from two tertiary care centres in Ottawa and Kingston. It is a fully accredited, acute care facility serving a regional population of 55,000.

It is the region’s largest acute care facility offering 24-hour emergency, obstetrics, radiology and on-site laboratory services. The facility also features a 10 bed ICU, six operating suites, day surgery and an ambulatory care clinic. In 2003, BGH completed a thirty-two million dollar, seventy thousand square foot expansion that included new emergency, recovery, radiology, ICU, OR, sterilization, and maternity departments.

Business Challenge
ìWith our old system, we had a lot of manual processes. We wanted to move to a state of the art HR system. The demands of our industry have increased and we really need better data retrieval, manipulation, and reporting capabilities,î says Ray Morrison, Manager of Financial Services.

ìTimesheets were done with pen and paper. Our HR processes were not working as efficiently as we knew they could be. Everything was either on paper or in an Excel file somewhere. This caused us to lose time sorting through printouts and raw data for things we knew should be easier to find.î

ìFor example, our hospital has forty departments and we have a large payroll distributions journal. So to understand what was happening in those departments, we had to print out a huge report every month that was three inches thick.î

BGHís employee information systems was disconnected, forcing them to compile disparate information by hand. Reports required by the Ontario Ministry of Health took three days every quarter just to get the information ready for presentation in Excel.

QHR Solution
ìWe went to the market and looked at about eight different vendors. Two things really stood out for us about QHR. The first thing was the power of the integrated Quadrant HR system. It became obvious early on how much Quadrant HR would complement everything else we were doing, like General Ledger integration with our new financials system.î

ìThe second thing that stood out was speaking with existing QHR customers. Those conversations with other Quadrant HR users really put QHR over the top.î

ìQuadrant HR has actually given me more time. It used to take me five to six hours every two weeks to calculate and process the payroll, which because of my other responsibilities usually meant I had to put in overtime. Now it only takes me about ten minutes to complete and ensure itís accurate. Weíre no longer incurring overtime expenses just to process payroll,î says Cyndi Horsefield, Payroll Clerk.

ìIn phase one of the project, we implemented Payroll and basic HR functionality. Data entry takes a little longer than in the past, due mainly to enhanced detail in coding of timesheets. The additional time spent at the front of the process has given us the ability to have reports for information we were never able to get in the past. Implementing scheduling in phase two should dramatically reduce payroll data entry time, payroll errors, and decrease departmental managersí administrative time,î says Ray Morrison.

In phase two of the project, Quadrant HR will help Brockville General Hospital eliminate paper-based timesheets, decrease administrative overhead and further reduce payroll errors with the implementation of electronic scheduling.

ìWe are looking forward to rolling out the scheduling application. This will increase controls for department managers and their staff. As we see it, the scheduling module will give the managers the ability to better manage their departments and resources, which is great,î says Matthew Armstrong, Finance Analyst.

ìBecause we configured this system the way we wanted, when we ask a question of the data, odds are very good we can get the answer. In the past that just wasnít possible,î says Morrison.

ìRight from the beginning, Iíve always said that the Quadrant HR implementation is the best one weíve ever been involved with. It was an exceptional process and very organized. The virtual university and e-learning is fantastic.î

ìWe are impressed with how well QHR Software stays current with all the payroll regulations. New taxation requirements have been working in the upgrades even before we knew about them. Speaking of upgrades, they have all been very smooth for us. With other vendors we often have to spend time de-bugging new versions, but with Quadrant HR, our experience is that the upgrades are bug-free.î

Brockville General Hospital depends on Quadrant HR as a complete, mission-critical solution for human resources, payroll, scheduling, and reporting.