ER departments face numerous challenges. They can be extremely busy at times, and the predictability of that is … well, not something you can predict.
As the physician scheduling administrator, you need to address all sorts of things like patient flow fluctuations, physician preferences, staff shortages and overcrowding. Your challenge is to not only schedule enough staff to meet the needs of the patients, but also to have the right staff in your ER department at the right time to provide care for specific patient health problems.
Patient arrivals are constantly changing with sudden volume fluctuations from hour to hour. At various times of the day, different types of patients need the proper care. Not to mention, you need to prepare your schedule so you have enough doctors for different day of week patterns and seasonal changes that come with school calendars, local demographics and the flu.
Traditionally, you would plan the shift scheduling system based on patient volume averaged over large time periods, without much consideration for this variability. The norm would be going with gut instinct actually leading to:
- Long times
- Risks to patients
- Substantial financial loss
- High walk-out rates
- Over coverage
- Under coverage
ER departments are among the most difficult specialties in the medical field to come up with a perfect schedule due to around the clock staffing requirements leading to a high clinician burnout rate. Software for emergency medicine scheduling is designed specifically for handling high emergency room pressures. Scheduling software simplifies the scheduling process and helps you create sensitive and fair schedules accurately and quickly.
Physician scheduling is streamlined and efficient using a web-based shift scheduling software. This type of scheduling program helps balance shift assignments through the web or through an Android or iPhone app.
Benefits of ER Scheduling Software Just some of the benefits of scheduling software include:
- Provides doctors and other staff the ability to request shift changes no matter where they are.
- Reduces the burden from administrators by automating time-off requests.
- Easily considers doctors' preferences and needs when it comes to their schedules.
- Equalizes demanding shifts and schedules across all providers.
Emergency medicine scheduling software is interactive and fully web-based making it easy for doctors to manage vacations, holidays, requests and switches all in real-time. The software will populate the schedule automatically free of errors following the rules, policies and customs of your group. It fairly distributes evenings, weekends and holidays, making it so simple to balance individual preferences and staffing requirements. And the ability to access schedules via the web or mobile devices is icing on the cake.
Overall, physician scheduling software takes the struggle of creating a schedule, helping you to create schedules equitably and fairly, but also accurately and quickly. In the end, everyone benefits from using online ER scheduling software: the patients, the physicians, and you!
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