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Shift scheduling for medical staff can be one of the most painful administrative tasks in any emergency medicine department or hospital around. The bigger your facility or department, the more arduous the task becomes.
Problems with Emergency Medicine Scheduling
Aside from the usual challenges of arranging schedules to meet the needs of a large group of people, medical facilities have additional scheduling woes to consider, including all of the following challenges.
- Accreditation Requirements
- Call Outs
- Efficiency Concerns
- On-Call Needs
- Overtime Concerns Private Practice Obligations
- Quality of Life
- Shift Changes
- Shift Coverage Needs
- Shift Preferences
- Time off Requests
- Union Requirements
- And more!
Then there is the steady stream of calls inquiring about the schedule. You know the ones.
- “Is it ready yet?”
- “Is there any way to change it?”
- “I forgot to request a day off, who can trade with me?”
- “I had to work the last holiday, this rotation doesn’t seem very fair.”
- “Dr. So-and-So never has to work holidays.”
- “\Insert Random Complaint Here\”
- “When does the schedule post again?”
- “Can you tell me schedule for a certain date?”
How on earth is an administrator to accomplish anything aside from the schedule over the course of several days, when constantly fielding calls, questions, concerns, emails, and text messages over said schedule.
Never mind the fact that there are literally dozens of ways for employees to request time off, including little slips of paper stuffed under doors or left on desks, email requests, phone messages, text messages, and more. It makes it so hard to keep up with everything and to ensure (or at least attempt to do so) that requests are honored whenever possible.
There Has to Be a Better Way!
The good news is, there is. Much better as a matter of fact. Using online physician scheduling software solves all these problems and more. Eliminate the confusion about requested days off by giving all employees access to do so via the software itself. Then all the requests are in a centralized location so they can be honored (when possible) as the shifts are made.
That’s just the beginning, though, when it comes to benefits. Shift scheduling software also takes the work out of creating the schedules too. It keeps all the requirements and requests in place and then creates a schedule for all necessary shifts according to your specification. You can set the software to avoid overtime pay at all costs and even to bring in additional physicians for days when there is traditionally more traffic in your emergency rooms by accessing historical data.
Finally, eliminate all those calls by sending out instant notifications of schedules when they post and empowering employees to switch shifts (within certain parameters and guidelines, of course) when they need to do so.
It’s amazing the difference software can make for your medical staff scheduling problems and how quickly you can experience the migraine eliminating benefits of effective, hands-free medical staff scheduling. Try it today and see what a difference it makes for your physician scheduling needs
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