Business goals and care delivery evolve as times change; however, clinicians still rely on workforce tools that were built to solve yesterday’s problems and cannot meet today’s demands. The result? Wasted time, duplicative efforts, delayed care, failed communication, and extraordinary efforts to complete basic tasks. Outdated tech not only diminishes the impact of care teams but also costs US hospitals $8.3 billion annually.¹ Progressive, tech-led health systems are transforming the clinician experience by investing in scalable and cost-efficient tools that impact productivity and ultimately, revenue. ² 

QGenda delivers a healthcare workforce management platform that organizations use to activate, deploy, and optimize the workforce. QGenda can help organizations automate workforce scheduling, improve room utilization, streamline administrative workflows, reduce scheduling and payroll errors, and uncover new revenue through better space and provider utilization. With holistic visibility into their workforce data, organizations can standardize workload expectations, preparing them to create optimal operational processes.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed eight decision-makers from six organizations with experience using the QGenda platform. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the interviewees and combined the results into a single composite organization, which is a large, complex, multihospital healthcare system with 20,000 employees (including 14,000 clinical employees) who span eight hospitals across the system.

Interviewees said that prior to adopting a modern workforce management platform, their organizations relied on outdated systems, manual processes, and inconsistent scheduling practices. They experienced challenges such as inefficient credentialing, poor visibility into nurse and physician availability, and high administrative overhead. These limitations led to delayed patient care, increased labor costs, and missed revenue opportunities — contributing to inefficiencies that cost their organizations millions of dollars annually.

After investing in the QGenda workforce management platform, the interviewees shared the positive impact on their organizations’ bottom lines. They noted productivity improvements of up to 80% in managing scheduling and payroll for care teams and administrators. Additionally, QGenda’s clinical capacity management features helped increase exam room utilization by more than 10%, generating more than $21 million in additional revenue. Communication improved using on-call management, reducing the time to contact on-call physicians and providing optimal patient safety. Finally, QGenda Insights enabled interviewees to analyze their workforce data across their organizations, supporting strategic decision-making for workforce planning.

Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:

• Increased profit of $6.9 million with improved credentialing processes and exam room utilization. By streamlining credentialing processes and reducing onboarding time by 20% in Year 1, the composite enables new care team members to begin seeing patients sooner, which boosts revenue and alleviates strain on existing staff. Automation and workflow enhancements contribute significantly to these improvements, reducing credentialing times by 50% by Year 3. Beyond speed, using QGenda improves credentialing process quality and consistency, minimizing errors and compliance risks. Another driver of increased profit is improved visibility into care team schedules and room usage, which increases exam room utilization by 5% in Year 1 to 10% in Year 3. Real-time connections between clinician schedules and exam rooms enable dynamic capacity management, yielding better patient throughput.

• Reduced technology and premium labor costs by $22.3 million. The composite organization replaces outdated scheduling and payroll systems with the QGenda platform. By consolidating tools, eliminating redundant vendor contracts, and reducing associated administrative overhead, the composite saves $600,000 annually. Additionally, staff freed from maintaining multiple systems can focus on strategic tasks like operational improvements, or in an academic setting, faculty support and research coordination. The QGenda platform also improves visibility into workforce deployment, enabling the composite to optimize internal staffing and shift coverage to lower-cost employees. With improved planning and transparency into schedules and contractual obligations, the composite reduces reliance on costly contingent labor such as locum tenens and traveling nurses.

• Increased care team productivity by 60%, worth $9.8 million. By implementing QGenda, care teams reduce time spent on scheduling and payroll administrative tasks by 60% in Year 3, enabling more direct patient care and improving overall throughput, as well as increasing provider satisfaction. Previously, physicians, nurses, and staff manually managed schedules, payroll issues, and on-call logistics, leading to inefficiencies, frustration, and delays in patient treatment. With centralized access to scheduling and real-time updates, clinicians save time and focus on delivering healthcare. Mobile access to shift availability and the ability to make changes independently enhance staff satisfaction and responsiveness. Efficient on-call management saves time and reduces communication barriers. Ultimately, the QGenda platform enables clinicians to practice at the top of their licenses, contributing to better patient outcomes.

• Increased administrative productivity by 80%, worth $17.9 million. Before implementing QGenda, department administrators and nurse managers were burdened with time-consuming scheduling and payroll-related tasks that detracted from clinical oversight. After adopting QGenda, scheduling responsibilities dropped dramatically, reducing scheduling time by 70% in Year 1 and 80% by Year 3. Automation and centralized tools streamline operations, enabling the composite to redirect 50% of its full-time payroll staff while still managing thousands of staff compensation payouts. Error rates in payroll processing fall to 0.02% from an industry average of 19.85%, saving time previously spent on corrections.³ Administrative teams gain the capacity to support strategic initiatives like operational improvements, and in an academic setting, research and faculty development.

• Reduced risk by $1.5 million. QGenda’s centralized on-call management system improves operational efficiency and reduces legal and compliance risks by providing real-time visibility into physician on-call assignments. Before implementation, decentralized scheduling created confusion and delays in identifying the correct on-call physician, especially in urgent care situations. This lack of transparency exposed the composite to liability and patient safety risks due to delays in providing the best patient care. With QGenda, it gains a single, reliable source for on-call information, enabling faster communication and clearer accountability.

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

• Improved workforce satisfaction leads to increased retention. An accurate and universally visible on-call schedule for hospital care teams allows staff members to contact the right people for assistance, minimizing disruptions to those off duty. This approach enhances job satisfaction and engagement among the composite’s doctors by reducing unnecessary calls during their time off, ultimately contributing to lower burnout and turnover rates. Additionally, QGenda enhances the composite’s workforce satisfaction by creating fair schedules that promote work-life balance, minimizing payroll errors that lead to frustration, and offering flexible self-service tools that empower clinical staff with greater autonomy and control.

• Enhanced operational excellence with a single, unified platform. A single, unified platform from QGenda provides the composite with visibility into workforce data and eliminates silos created by separate systems. When scheduling, credentialing and enrollment, and clinical capacity management occur in different tools, it misses opportunities for operational improvements. By consolidating these functions, QGenda simplifies the composite’s workflows, enhances the employee experience, and reduces IT complexity. The composite moves all clinical staff scheduling into QGenda to enable coordination across physicians, nurses, and technicians on a single platform.

• Improved governance and standardization of physician expectations. Implementing QGenda’s advanced scheduling system prompts leaders and frontline staff at the composite to define their business models and scheduling rules clearly. This process, though sometimes challenging, helps its departments formalize and standardize their operational expectations, providing clarity for management and physicians. By defining clear requirements for success in a role, the composite creates compensation models that drive behaviors needed to improve patient care and the bottom line.

• Integrated rollout drives adoption and accelerates time to value. A comprehensive rollout strategy for the QGenda platform accelerates adoption by enabling the composite to optimize its change management and maximize the platform’s value. By deploying scheduling, exam room management, and analytics simultaneously, the composite accelerates revenue gains from optimizing exam room utilization to drive patient throughput. Implementing scheduling, time tracking, and payroll systems streamlines processes and simplifies transitions, significantly reducing the need for retraining.

• A trusted team behind the platform. The composite recognizes QGenda for its exceptional customer service and strong commitment to client success. Its leaders view the company as a collaborative partner that is responsive, reliable, and dedicated to honoring its promises. QGenda’s culture supports long-term relationships and a willingness to change with the ever-evolving needs of complex healthcare environments.

Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:

• QGenda platform license costs. The composite organization incurs costs for an enterprise license from QGenda and ongoing optimization. Over three years, these costs amount to a risk-adjusted $7.5 million.

• Internal resources to support QGenda platform implementation and training. The composite dedicates a team of five to manage the QGenda implementation over Year 1, which decreases to three team members by Year 3. On top of deployment labor, care teams and administrators each receive QGenda platform training. Collectively, implementation and training costs amount to $3.55 million in employee labor over three years. 

The financial analysis that is based on the interviews found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $58.5 million over three years versus costs of $11.0 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $47.5 million and an ROI of 430%.