When you think of the large group purchasing organizations, it's easy to image logistical coordination for medical technologies and supplies. But what about people?

Broadlane has taken on management of health care providers' greatest asset, their human resources. Broadlane has offered workforce management solutions since 2001 and has recently launched a new brand, Prolucent™ Workforce Management, dedicated to this business. Many clients tap Broadlane specifically for its workforce solutions.

As administrators know, payroll often accounts for more than half of hospital expenditures, the preponderance going toward clinical staff. And it's only getting worse.

"In terms of spending, staffing costs will grow over time as you have the impact of the aging population and the passage of health care reform and if we have around 30 million people introduced into the system for health care coverage. You will see demand go up for health care services and the demand for labor increases linearly along with it," said Jeff Ondeck, senior vice president of Prolucent Workforce Management.

Customers for Prolucent's workforce solutions are primarily health care providers including acute care and long-term acute care hospitals.

"Our offering is fairly unique in the marketplace and not a lot of other GPOs have built out similar offerings. We don't see a lot of competition directly within the GPO space," Ondeck said. "We do see it come from technology players and other types of service companies. So we can grow our customer base with the users of other GPOs as well as Broadlane."

What specifically are Prolucent's offerings? Workforce technologies and services that orchestrate staff resources from a network of medical personnel agencies. Prolucent's products include a suite of web-based software and services to help hospitals manage deployment of the clinical workforce.

One key element of Prolucent's solutions is its web-based vendor management system (VMS) technology aimed at the external workforce provided by medical staffing agencies. The end-to-end software solution helps with contract labor including requisition of fulfillment. Hospitals put orders out over this platform that go to a network of about 500 agencies.

Another component is credential management.

Hospitals use the system to review and track all of the credentials--licensure, skills, experience, other types of certifications--all tracked electronically so nothing falls through the cracks in tracking agency labor.

"Often hospitals don't have that documentation and rely on the agency. Through our system you eliminate that and have all that information available in real time. Hospitals can use the software to make sure clinical credentials are up to their quality management requirements," Ondeck said. "We work with our hospitals to define what are the minimum skills requirements of someone coming into ICU or med surg, telemetry, L&D, burn, or other units. Unit by unit we help them define requirements and then use technology to make sure that every clinician that comes in meets those skills requirements."

Time tracking is also part of the solution to keep tabs on contract labor in terms of hours worked, rates and payments. All of Prolucent's solutions are web based so no hardware investment is required.

"The system eliminates overbilling by agencies and all the work hospitals used to do in a paper-based world to make sure they are paying the right nurse the right amount at the right time," he said.

In addition to managing agency labor, the other major software solution from Prolucent is a web-based core scheduling platform for internal staff. This piece was added when Prolucent recently acquired Symbio Solutions.

"The legacy scheduling platforms are not web-based so hospitals have to make significant technology investments in hardware and implementation and interfaces with core systems. And legacy systems don't interact with the agency system in an elegant way. The reason we have expanded into the core scheduling (of hospital staff as well as contract workers) is that we believe hospitals want one piece of software to determine what are the staffing needs and who among all sources of clinical labor--your employees, float pools, shared resources with sister hospitals, and agency labor--who's the best clinician from a quality and cost perspective to fill that shift? Our software will be able to accomplish that in a way we believe no other piece of software can," Ondeck said.

The company is working to integrate this internal core staffing system with its external agency platform to create the "killer app" for hospital personnel management.

When this is complete, Prolucent's offerings will become an even more valuable productivity tool.

"There is a lot of opportunity for productivity gains in the system by making sure you are not calling off nurses in one unit, while another unit works overtime. Or calling off your own employees while a sister hospital contracts with an agency," he said. "The software will allow you to move the pieces of the puzzle among units; there are huge efficiencies that can be gained with the same available resources."

The productivity gains may help soften the anticipated impact of a projected serious shortage of nurses as well as allied health professionals (such as rad techs, PT, pharmacy, etc.)

Prolucent is expected to grow both organically and by acquisition. In addition to Symbio Solutions, they may look for other technology acquisitions within the next year or two.