Database software giant Oracle Corp. said today it’s pushing even further into the healthcare industry, adding new workforce management capabilities to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management offering.

The new tools will enable healthcare providers to adapt to the dynamic labor market in the industry, better organize their workforces to meet patient demand, and also retain and attract new staff, the company said.

In addition to workforce management, Oracle is also enhancing the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications suite with new features that will help healthcare organizations boost financial visibility and build more resilient supply chains. The idea is to help them reduce costs and enhance decision-making, Oracle said.

The additions to Oracle’s platform stem from its $28.3 billion acquisition of the healthcare data records company Cerner Corp. back in 2021. In its recent earnings call, Oracle said it’s accelerating the transition of Cerner’s capabilities to the cloud, and today’s announcements underscore the rapid progress being made.

According to Oracle, healthcare providers desperately need better workforce management tools as they struggle with continuous staffing challenges that negatively impact patient care. Demand for healthcare services is unpredictable at the best of times, and with many providers suffering from low staffing levels, this can mean substandard care that impacts patient outcomes

The Oracle Workforce Scheduling and Oracle Workforce Labor Optimization capabilities in Oracle Cloud HCM can help organizations to address staffing challenges. They provide managers with better insights that can help them to plan ahead to better meet variable patient demand and deploy the right people at the right times, Oracle said, while also helping to ensure medical staff are more engaged and motivated.

Oracle Cloud HCM is a popular HR solution that connects every human resource process within a native employee experience platform. By connecting all employee data on a single platform, HR teams have access to a single source of truth to help inform their people strategies. “With Oracle Cloud HCM, healthcare organizations can meet employees where they are, with a complete HR and employee experience solution that better supports their needs with increased autonomy and flexibility,” said Chris Leone, executive vice president of applications development at Oracle.

The updates introduce what Oracle terms “employee-driven scheduling tools” that enable workers to have an influence on their schedules by specifying their shift preferences, requesting shift swaps and claiming additional shift opportunities when they want, using their own personal device. Worker’s shifts will then be drawn up automatically based on each staff member’s preferences and the hospital’s needs.

Artificial intelligence plays a key role here, generating dynamic worker schedules based on clinical needs, while adhering to complex union rules. This enables HR teams to prioritize the needs of both the organization and individual workers as they plan the schedules of healthcare staff.

The holistic insights delivered by the platform also enable managers to match the best-suited workers with the most appropriate assignments in real time, based on each worker’s skills and experience and the current needs of the hospital. With continuously updated data, managers can shift staff to where they need to be at the right times, improving patient satisfaction and reducing risk and cost, leading to better outcomes for everyone involved, Oracle said.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said Oracle is tackling one of the major challenges for HR teams, at a time when employee expectations are shifting and workers demand more flexibility. “The updates to Oracle Cloud HCM give healthcare organizations the intuitive tools they need to effectively manage complex scheduling and labor needs, meeting changing patient demands and improve employee retention,” he said.

Meanwhile, the new tools in the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications suite will help healthcare organizations to better manage their financial operations, Oracle explained. The Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning, Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management and Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing applications are getting new, healthcare-specific capabilities designed to consolidate disconnected systems around finance, logistics and planning.

They include new financial consolidation and reporting tools that promise better visibility and control around financial performance that will enable organizations to use AI and automation to improve governance, corporate reorganization and acquisitions and enhance planning and decision making. Enhanced procurement capabilities will help healthcare providers to reduce the cost of medical suppliers by combining contract and pricing integrations with bulk purchasing capabilities. Finally, the new replenishment planning and recall management functionality will help to ensure healthcare firms to better predict supply and demand and ensure they have adequate stocks of medicines on hand.

Steve Miranda, Oracle’s executive vice president of applications development, said increased integration is critical to making healthcare more efficient and accessible.

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