Case Study:

Happy Valley Hospital System

Police Department
Happy Valley Hospital System (HVHS) is a multi-campus hospital network which
delivers medical and health care services in the St. Louis, Missouri regional area. The primary
hospital locations are in St. Peters, Chesterfield, Clayton and Bridgeton Missouri. HVHS
employs some 1,500 full-time and 300 part-time employees and services on average some
60,000 patients per year. The central headquarters offices for HVHS are co-located at the
Clayton, Missouri hospital facility.
The police department at HVHS is comprised of 60 full-time Police Officers and 20 parttime Police Officers distributed across all four campuses, each of which has a police lieutenant
on site. A new reporting organization structure was put in place 18 months prior utilizing newly
appointed lieutenants as leaders for each campus. The lieutenants in turn report to a central
System Chief of Police (Chief) located at the headquarters offices. The primary duty of a
campus Police Officer is to provide safety and security services to all employees, patients and
visitors at their respective campuses. Police Officers are often times called upon for alternate and
extra duty assignments and often times experience numerous schedule and shift changes due to
various factors such as special events, coverage for absences of other officers, unanticipated
emergencies, etc.

System
Chief of Police

Lieutenant
Chesterfield
Campus

15 FT Police
Officers

5 PT Police
Officers

USB:\Happy Valley.doc

Lieutenant
Clayton
Campus

Lieutenant
St. Peters
Campus

Lieutenant
Bridgeton
Campus

15 FT Police
Officers

15 FT Police
Officers

15 FT Police
Officers

5 PT Police
Officers

5 PT Police
Officers

5 PT Police
Officers

During a recent accounting audit it was noted that salary expenditures within the System
Police Department were tracking significantly unfavorable to budget. The CFO brought this
finding to the Chief to find out what was occurring. The Chief in turn communicated the
situation to his lieutenants who in turn were instructed to review duty rosters against payroll
timekeeping entries to validate time paid for time worked. Lieutenants were given 5 business
days to report their findings.
Time reporting for payroll purposes for police officers at HVHS is a two-part process.
The payroll also runs bi-weekly. Officers must complete a manual Time and Attendance (TA)
exception form in hard copy to their respective lieutenants for approval. Officers concurrently
enter their exceptions electronically into the HVHS payroll system via the HRIS portal. The
electronic entries into the portal are what actually generates the paychecks. As the process is an
exception process, it is presumed that the normal workweek consists of 40 hours. Only
exceptions are notated via the TA and entered electronically. The following is a list of exceptions
that officers are to report both via the TA and when making electronic entries:

Holiday
Overtime
Sick Leave
Personal Leave with Pay
Personal Leave without Pay
Bereavement
2nd Shift Differential
Overtime on 2nd Shift Differential
3rd Shift Differential
Overtime on 3rd Shift Differential
Shift Change
Schedule Change
Doc Pay

Upon receipt of the lieutenants reports, the Chief noted that all reports indicated that all
time TA reports correlated accurately with duty assignments. The Chief requested a report from
the payroll department of the entries that were made electronically to compare against the
lieutenants information and found numerous inconsistencies between what was submitted via
the manual hard-copy TAs and what was entered electronically resulting in significant
overpayments (and in some cases underpayments) to officers. Over the course of the prior fiscal
year the unfavorable variance amounted to close to $150,000 and some officers were owed in
total $25,000.

USB:\Happy Valley.doc