Physician scheduling is an important function for every medical organization. Hospitals, emergency departments, and other healthcare facilities often rely on a shift-based schedule. Because of this, you're likely facing many challenges when trying to meet all the scheduling needs.
When you start evaluating on-call scheduling software options, there will be an abundance of scheduling software providers to choose from. When you're sorting through the features and benefits of each, make sure you focus on a couple important questions:
1- Does the software offer a feature that you find valuable?
2- Does the software satisfy your requirements?
So, with these two questions in mind, what do you need to consider when evaluating shift scheduling software?
1. Allows for Modifications
You'll want to be able to make adjustments so the program meets your specific needs for the schedule. It should allow you to define your own shifts, including color codes, start/end times and breaks. Can you change the data that's shown in reports and on the screen? Perhaps you want to set a certain day of the week as the start of the entire work week. Ensure you can create reports and schedules based on requirements such as employee groups, types of shifts, date ranges and other defined data like patients or locations.
2. Improves Staff Utilization
The emergency medicine scheduling program should give you the ability to specify how many doctors or hours you require in a shift schedule such as department, position, location, and shift. You'll want to easily see if you're under-scheduled or over-scheduled based on these requirements.
You should be able to display a list of all your physicians, nurses and other medical staff available to work. This feature can be quite useful if you need to fill in a shift for a no-show, call in sick or other reason a shift becomes available. Once you assign an employee an open shift, the software should automatically update the list.
3. Provides for Pre-Scheduling Ability
The on call scheduling software should let you create a schedule into the future as you need such as a six-month or 24 month in advance schedule. Then you can pre-schedule shifts time-off requests, holidays, rotations and more for your staff at any time.
4. Supports Group and Individual Schedules
Your emergency medicine scheduling software should allow you to create specific groups such as:
1- Individual employee schedule
2- Groups of employees schedule
3- All employees schedule
Ensure you have the flexibility to organize a schedule for specific time frames like days, weeks or months.
5. Saves Valuable Time
You'll want your doctors, nurses and other medical staff to be able to look at the schedule straight from the software, but still be able to protect the information. This means the software should offer read-only protection for those with permission to look at the schedule.
On call scheduling software should give you the ability to distribute reports and schedules through multiple methods such as web publishing, print or email so your staff can get the reports and schedules in various ways.
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