The Digital Transformation of Scheduling: A New Approach

Many hospitals in the U.S. are still relying on antiquated physician on-call scheduling processes. This can often take the form of a whiteboard or even a large binder, held together with duct tape and re-built nearly every few days as daily on-call schedule changes are frequently made. Unfortunately, managing physician scheduling this way introduces extra work and miscommunication between the hospitalists, operators, and schedulers.

This was the process that Doylestown Hospital utilized before deciding to move to a modern scheduling solution to centralize their on-call schedules. A long time-user of the TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration platform, Doylestown realized that they could streamline their on-call daily roster creation by implementing TigerConnect Physician Scheduling to smoothly manage overlapping schedules and move to an all digital-scheduling format.

 

TigerConnect Physician Scheduling Creating, managing, and merging shift and on-call schedules has never been easier.   Watch Video

 

Pitfalls of an antiquated system

One of the significant problems that Doylestown Hospital faced was the manual and labor-intensive work required to manage the various on-call schedules from different departments and practices. The process of merging those schedules and creating a daily on-call roster was time-consuming for the administrators, physicians, and hospitalists. 

Some departments faxed their on-call schedules to the other floors, but those were often delayed and would not come in until 9:00 a.m. or later in the morning. Similarly, because it was a manual process and mostly a paper-based scheduling system, the printed schedules were often out of date because changes would happen at various times of the day. This cascading effect would require the different departments or admins to refax the updated schedules to the relevant recipients.

If providers outside the hospital wanted to check a schedule and see who was on-call, they would have to be within the premises physically or call the switchboard to get that information, so there was an obvious need to innovate and upgrade to a digital system.

The ease of digital transformation

The process of moving from a manual system to a digital format can be a multifaceted problem. Primarily, the puzzle comes down to understanding the needs of the various departments and buy-in from affiliated physician groups.

In the case of Doylestown Hospital, multiple departments and physician practices used different methods to create and communicate their on-call schedules. There was a lack of access to changes that occurred throughout the day, leaving stakeholders in the dark.

All-in-one clinical communication and physician scheduling

Doylestown Hospital found that TigerConnect Physician Scheduling had an automated way to streamline their on-call schedules. Immediately, they knew that the solution would be right for their organization because of the ability to integrate their schedules with their existing TigerConnect Collaboration platform. 

Using both TigerConnect products, Doylestown Hospital can leverage the roles functionality, enabling the on-call physician to keep track of all communication connected to that role. This allows staff to communicate with the right provider at the right time. The on-call physician can also directly opt-in or opt-out of the role if they need the day off. 

This resulted in a lot of saved time for the various departments responsible for creating the schedules manually beforehand. The operators no longer have to manually merge the on-call daily roster and spend long hours creating and updating schedules. Hospitalists, various departments, and practices don’t need to worry about spending exhaustive hours creating and faxing schedules because they are all managed within the application.

The TigerConnect Physician Scheduling Solution

The complexity of a manual scheduling system with multiple departments and stakeholders can quickly become overwhelming. TigerConnect Physician Scheduling helps organizations efficiently manage on-call schedules, keeping physicians satisfied, staff informed, and patient care front and center with a streamlined on-call scheduling solution.

Tags: On-Call Schedule Software, On-Call Scheduling, physician scheduling, on-call schedule