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Caregiver Unfilled Shift Cost Calculator

Most call-offs land outside business hours, and coverage gets worked by hand from the owner's phone. An uncovered shift costs you the hours you cannot bill plus the time spent scrambling. Covering it usually costs far less. Price both with your numbers, then see what a typical year of call-offs runs.

Before you start

Plan on about three minutes and bring your own figures. Nothing is stored and no sign up is needed.

What you will need. Billable rate per hour, Caregiver base wage per hour, Average shift length, hours, Covering pay multiplier

Your rates

$
The national median private pay rate is about $35 per hour (CareScout Cost of Care Survey). Replace it with your own blended rate.
$
The BLS median caregiver wage works out to about $17 per hour at full-time hours. Replace it with your own average.
Your typical shift length. The per-shift math below uses it.

Covering the shift

What your payroll pays for the covering caregiver's hours. 1.0 means those hours are paid at base wage. 1.5 means time and a half. Set it to what your payroll does.
$
Any flat thank-you or pickup incentive you pay the caregiver who covers. Zero if you do not pay one.

The scramble

Advanced options
$
%
The calls, the texts, the reshuffle to find a covering caregiver. Time yourself for a week. Most owners undercount it.

A typical year

Count last month and divide by the weeks for the first field. For coverage, your best estimate as a percentage. After a month of logging, the in-depth workbook gives you the real coverage rate.

Cost of one uncovered shift

$0
$0 saved by covering
If you cover it instead
$0
A typical year of call-offs
$0
An uncovered shift costs about $0. Covering it costs $0, so the gap the coverage protocol closes is $0 every time.

What the uncovered shift costs

Email yourself this breakdown We send the figures you just produced, with your inputs beside them.

The method

What one uncovered shift costs you

When a caregiver calls off and no one covers, you lose the margin between what you bill and what you would have paid. Add the office time spent trying to fill it. When you do cover it, the cost is usually just the premium on the covering hours, any bonus, and the same scramble time. The gap between the two is why a coverage protocol pays for itself.

How this is calculated

The hours you cannot bill

An uncovered four hour shift at the national medians of $35 and $17 loses $72 in margin before you count anything else. That is money the schedule was going to earn, gone.

The scramble

The calls, texts, and reshuffling to find a covering caregiver take real time from the owner or scheduler. Priced at an office rate, an hour of it is another $30 on top of the lost margin.

What covering costs instead

If a caregiver picks up the shift, you pay the premium your payroll applies to those hours. Add any pickup bonus and the same scramble time. At a 1.0 multiplier and no bonus, covering costs you only the office time, which is why covering almost always beats leaving it open.

Carry this into the decision

Stop working coverage from your phone at 5 AM

The Shift Coverage and Call-Off System adds the call-off log, the reason ranking, the backup roster, and the coverage scripts that shrink next quarter's call-offs, in one license.

See the Shift Coverage and Call-Off System

$44. 30 days. Reply to your receipt or email support@truestephr.com for a full refund. No form or explanation is required, and you keep the files.

Related

More free tools and the notes behind them

This tool estimates from the figures you enter. It is general information rather than legal, tax, or accounting advice, so check the result against your own records before you rely on it.

Use the number

The calculation is the start of the decision.

Keep the result, move the live assumptions into an editable workbook, and put the number to work inside the matched kit.

01 · Calculate

Run the free analysis

Change the inputs until the result reflects the business you actually operate.

02 · Keep and model

Email the breakdown

Use the result form on this page, then carry the assumptions into the editable version.

See the Shift Coverage and Call-Off System →
03 · Decide

Apply it to the live issue

Apply the number inside the matched kit, and add a Setup Session if you want it running on your numbers.

Add a $149 Setup Session →