How Can Physician Scheduling Software Help Manage COVID-19?

It’s times like this when the curtain begins to get pulled back to expose vulnerabilities in our health care system. In the event of an emergency, what do you think the likelihood that every hospital and healthcare system is equipped to create emergency medical staff schedules for the Emergency Department, Hospitalists, and Nursing staff? For many organizations the likelihood is low.

Medical practices and hospital departments still heavily rely on physician and advanced practice provider scheduling via Excel spreadsheets and sometimes even paper and pencil. I talk to practices throughout the United Stated every day that are using these methods to organize and schedule their practitioners. Many organizations’ ability to quickly and efficiently create emergency scheduling scenarios considering variables such as availability based on someone’s current health status is non-existent. As soon as an emergency schedule would have a schedule created by hand or in Excel, the variables could be changing, and everything would need to be redone. Rules-based automated physician scheduling software that is available from any internet-ready computer makes this easy and a lot less time-consuming. If the scheduling process is documented and you have adequately trained back-ups this exercise would be effortless.

Quickly adding, changing, and remove resources, balancing workload, and easily making changes to the on-call schedule is key for a hospital to have the right providers in the right places at the right time. It makes no sense for a hospital switchboard or Emergency Department to spend valuable minutes trying to locate and contact a provider who has called out sick. One source of truth in regard to available specialists for the ED, Hospitalists, and nursing staff will be paramount for maintaining trust and confidence in the system.

In a world where we have been scared into preparing for a breach of medical information or countless other “things” that have been made a priority in healthcare budgets, it’s times like this when the basics matter. Hospitals need people, equipment, supplies, medicine, and space to care for patients. Many of which are being called into question in an outbreak such as COVID-19.

We don’t think it’s too late. Rule-based automated physician scheduling software can be set up quickly, is easy to use, and cost-effective, and can be a valuable investment as hospitals begin creating contingency plans.

If you need to create an emergency schedule of physicians available to assist the ED is your hospital and medical system prepared?

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Tags: hospital switchboard software, medical staff scheduling software, hospital staff scheduling software, healthcare staff scheduling software, physician schedule, physician scheduling software, COVID-19