The hospital nursing shortage has come to the online auction block.

Increasingly, hospitals are turning to an eBay-type bidding system to fill open shifts, where nurses work the vacant slot at a pay rate they set themselves.

Now, this marriage of Web scheduling and health care wages - known as shift bidding - has come to Georgia.

In August, Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale launched an online shift system from Bid-Shift, a private San Diego-based company. BidShift Chief Executive Bruce Springer, who lives in Atlanta, said the company has set up shift bidding auctions in 14 hospitals nationally.

Such bidding lets nurses make extra money. And proponents say the Web-based scheduling innovation reduces hospitals' use of temporary-agency nurses. This helps them save money and promotes more consistency in patient care.

Sharp HealthCare, a San Diego hospital system, runs a wage-bidding auction as an eBay in reverse. A maximum price is posted for an unfilled shift, and registered nurses qualified for that shift then bid that wage or offer a lower one. The lowest bidder at the end of a defined time period gets the shift.

Sharp, which operates several hospitals, uses the auction not just for RNs but also for nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses, and rehab and respiratory therapists.

Sharp has sold 2,200 shifts since it started using the system about two years ago and has realized savings from needing fewer temp-agency nurses.

"The whole thing is to incentivize nurses to stay at Sharp," said Angela Athis, director of its staffing resource network. "It also has helped us recruit some nurses into our system."

Since its debut about three years ago, the Web wage auction is an increasing trend.

Denise Flook, a nurse consultant for the Georgia Hospital Association, said the scheduling software has been expensive in the past. "But, as more companies have developed them, they've become more affordable for hospitals," Flook said.

Southern Regional's BidShift start-up system will streamline the filling of vacant shifts. Southern Regional's system won't feature wage bidding, at least at the start. But it may be the first Georgia hospital to adopt such a Web-based tool for scheduling, according to the Georgia Hospital Association.

Currently, nurses at the facility sign up for shifts on a first-come, first-served basis. Now an RN will be able to go onto the Web at home to sign up for slots not yet taken, some at an incentive pay rate.

The BidShift system will pay for itself if 376-bed Southern Regional lowers its use of temp nurses by 6 percent, said Maria Kulma, vice president of patient care services.

Temp nurses cost about $50 an hour, while staff nurses may average about half that, Kulma added.

Nurses signing up for BidShift at Southern Regional appeared pleased by the new system, which also will include nursing-tech shifts.

"I think it's going to be really good," said Sheri Taylor, a full-time RN in the neonatal intensive care unit who lives in Senoia. "I will be able to use the Internet at home and sign up."

According to Neale Callow, a San Diego nurse who works at Sharp, price bidding works smoothly. Callow works as a "per diem" nurse at a base pay of $32.25 an hour, and much of the time, he can work an auctioned shift at about $43 or $45 an hour.

The bidding isn't fierce, Callow said.

"Somebody can come in and underbid, but most times, I get what I bid for," he said. If the hospital pays him $45 an hour, it still saves money from what a temp agency nurse would cost, Callow added.

BidShift's Springer says that if a shift remains unfilled under an auction and looms only days away, a hospital may switch to a Priceline.com-like tool. That allows a nurse to offer a bid at any wage, with no designated pay ceiling.

- This article is a reprint from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.