The future is now. Long-range planning helps a hospital adapt to changes in volunteer utilization.

To get an idea of how volunteers were currently being used in the hospital industry, in 1987 the director of volunteer services at St. Joseph Hospital, Flint, MI, began an informal survey of what individuals thought and felt on the subject. He also reviewed the hospital literature on volunteers. The research revealed that many hospitals had fewer inpatients and a more rapid patient turnover than they had had before, that competition for patients and volunteers was intensifying, that paid staff were busier, and that department heads who used volunteers were satisfied with them and wanted more of them. To improve its use of volunteers, the department initiated formal discussions among volunteer group leaders to identify major areas of concern. Once these areas had been identified a Task Force Leadership Group worked to establish goals for addressing these areas of concern. Six volunteer committees were then formed, each with the task of generating recommendations regarding how volunteer services could be improved. The committees eventually generated more than 130 recommendations. The volunteer services director and a consultant consolidated, reclassified, and rewrote these, ultimately submitting 79 proposals for approval. A number of these recommendations have already been implemented, and the volunteer services department will implement more of them in the future.