61–70 of 211 posts
I'm mostly amazed that their nurses are only working 8-hour shifts. In the US, it's common to work 12-hour shifts (but only 3 days/week).
Edit 1: 9-6 is 9 hours -_-
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Yeah this sentence was a bit of an anticlimax: "Preliminary results concluded that it achieved all of these aims, but the city had to employ an extra 17 staff, costing 12m kroner (£1.4m), Bloomberg reported." Am I missing something because that seems painfully obvious without even having to to undertake the experiment no? That being said I absolutely love that the Swedish government was willing to entertain such an i…
My interpretation is that the cost could be calculated beforehand but not the benefit. If the outcome was a dramatically improved care and well-being of patients that saw much shorter hospital stays OR an unanticipated reduction in the need for staff as a knock on effect of shorter workdays, then the benefit might have been considered worth the cost.
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I think the idea is that costs ballooned more than expected. That shouldn't be shocking either - each shift change requires people to scrub in, pass on information from the previous shift, and so on - but it's a deeper question than adding new staff to cover the missing hours.
The numbers suggest this is not the case. They needed 17 extra employees for 68 existing staff members. Naively, one would expect that for 68 x 8 = 544 man hours per week, one would need 544/6 = 91 (rounded up) employees. Yet 68+17 = 85, which is six employees less !
So, 1.5 million US dollars over two years (less, if you account for the saved unemployment costs. ref. trynewideas comment), for happier employees and better care. I personally have a hard time seeing this as any form of indication that it's "spiraling out of control". I agree with other commenters, this smells of politics more than economics.
$1.5 million for 68 employees at a nursing home. I work in a healthcare system with 120,000 employees. Let's say we reduced hours to 6. Using the Swedish numbers, that would cost our organization $2.6 billion dollars, or roughly 10% of annual budget.
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$1.5 million for 68 employees at a nursing home. I work in a healthcare system with 120,000 employees. Let's say we reduced hours to 6. Using the Swedish numbers, that would cost our organization $2.6 billion dollars, or roughly 10% of annual budget.
The costs are not trivial, I agree. But neither are the stated benefits. I personally value those benefits, even at a 10% premium.
The main reason this _very_ small scale experiment seems to be scrapped early is not because of costs, but politics. Right-wing politicians have seemingly wanted to end it as soon as possible for quite some time now - and obviously voted against the proposal from the start as well. And at this time and age, employee satisfaction and health benefits doesn't hold up against screams about costs.
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Then again, the hours that were cut also wouldn't have to be paid to the people not working them. In a perfect situation this would have led to higher employment numbers and happier employees. However, the Bloomberg source[1] also mentions that pay was not cut, which led to the overhead costs. You are right that this consequence could've been seen from miles away. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/sw…
> You are right that this consequence could've been seen from miles away. Which is why this is very close to just propaganda against a 6h work day.
I would take a 10 hours day, 4 work days and a three days long weekend over a 6 hours workday routine. Edit 1: 9-6 is 9 hours -_-
Everybody would.