Better care starts with better schedules: How VFLOK powers fair staffing in U.S. hospitals

# About VFLOK

VFLOK is an AI-driven scheduling copilot built specifically for nurses. It enables staff to swap shifts, request changes, and find last-minute coverage without depending on manual coordination. Already live in 11 hospitals and serving 30,000 staff members, VFLOK’s mission is clear: create human-centered scheduling that respects preference, fairness, and the realities of clinical work.

As VFLOK prepares to expand across U.S. health systems, it needs a scheduling engine capable of handling the operational complexity, regulatory constraints, and staffing volatility that define hospital environments. To scale responsibly (without compromising fairness or safety) VFLOK turned to Timefold.

# The challenge: Human-centered scheduling at scale

# Manual planning hits its limit

Every four weeks, planners assembled hundreds of shifts. A manual process comparable to “playing Tetris,” but with higher stakes and more rules. Despite best efforts, the outcomes were often perceived as unfair. VFLOK needed to give hospitals the ability to create fair rosters at the push of a button, without losing the nuance of real clinical needs.

# Legacy systems couldn’t keep up

Existing tools could generate only a single “optimal” day set. But real nurse scheduling requires far more nuance:

• second-choice days
• pattern preferences
• break spacing
• appetite for extra shifts
• unit-level constraints

VFLOK needed an engine that could ingest rich soft constraints and still return a valid, high-quality roster.

# Multi-unit assignments created a compliance maze

Nurses often belong simultaneously to:

• a primary unit
• multiple sister units
• a hospital-wide float pool

Manually managing scope, qualifications, certifications, and unit-hierarchy rules proved impossible at scale. What hospitals needed was built-in compliance, not one more spreadsheet.

# Opaque planning created distrust

Staff often had no insight into why they were assigned certain shifts. Without transparent reasoning, even mathematically optimal rosters could feel unfair. VFLOK wanted to give hospitals a way to show the “why” behind each decision.

# The solution: PlanningAI with fairness, compliance, and explainability at the core

# Automated employee shift scheduling

VFLOK embedded Timefold’s Employee Shift Scheduling (ESS) model, enabling hospitals to generate fair, balanced rosters in minutes. No more manual puzzle-solving, planners now start with a high-quality schedule and fine-tune only where needed.

# Best-in-class optimization technology

With 50+ preconfigured constraints, VFLOK can now handle the operational complexity that legacy tools could not. Patterns, preferences, staffing ratios, and soft constraints become inputs instead of obstacles.

# Compliance as a baseline

Timefold’s PlanningAI ensures every schedule respects:

• labor regulations
• qualification requirements
• credential restrictions
• cross-unit staffing rules
• safe scheduling boundaries

Compliance is now guaranteed by default.

# Explainable AI

VFLOK and Timefold introduce transparent scheduling logic. Planners can drill from hospital-wide KPIs down to a single nurse to understand:

• why they were assigned
• why someone else wasn’t
• how fairness scores change
• how preferences and constraints were weighed

This transparency builds trust for both planners and the workforce. (Examples shown in page 3 screenshots, e.g., explanations for Baptiste, Malik, Stanley, Elijah.)

# Real-time re-optimization

When a nurse calls out sick or a shift becomes unassigned, planners receive instant recommendations for the best alternative, preserving fairness and minimizing disruption. Hospitals move from reactive scramble to proactive resilience.

# The outcome: A scheduling foundation built for modern healthcare

By embedding Timefold, VFLOK transformed its AI copilot into a hospital-ready scheduling engine that can scale across complex clinical environments. Planners now generate fair and compliant rosters in minutes instead of weeks. Nurses understand why decisions were made, which increases trust and reduces friction. And when disruptions occur VFLOK adapts instantly, offering the best alternatives without compromising care quality or staff wellbeing.

For hospitals, this means more predictable staffing, fewer manual errors, and schedules that reflect the realities of clinical work. For VFLOK, it means a platform ready to expand confidently across U.S. health systems, proving that human-centered scheduling becomes truly possible only when supported by powerful, transparent optimization.