In fast-paced healthcare settings, where changes are happening across the board in trauma and emergency settings, hospitals have difficulty managing on-call coverage and reaching out to on-call provider when required for patient care.
Imagine a scenario where a nurse tries to reach an on-call hospitalist for a patient’s critical result. Typically, the nurse would have to go through multiple departments and tools to leave the provider’s a callback message or number.
Developing a solid plan for an on-call schedule displays an organization’s focus on consistency and reliability towards patient care.
Enterprise Shift Scheduling Software
A single platform to manage the complex need of shift administrators, providers, and enable HIPPA based clinical communication.
- A mobile app for providers to have accurate On-Call schedule and notification or alert when the on-call schedule changes. The app should also allow the flexibility of the provider to make any schedule changes.
- A mobile app for shift administrators to have accurate on-call schedules across the facility and make changes quickly as the need arises.
- A read-only roster to be displayed in multiple locations for staff to know the on-call providers for each specialty.
- An enterprise scheduling and clinical communication app for shift planner to efficiently manage the on-call and regular shifts.
Team Allocation
Managing the patient flow and maximizing optimization requires understanding the staff skill-set.
Building a successful cross-functional team requires:
- A team should include providers of different skills. An example can be a hospitalist team that can have a combination of attending and app physicians.
- A team should have the flexibility of adding more providers for surge readiness or when the demand arises.
- A team should have consistent team-mates and schedules. Ex. can be Clinical Team for specialized care like Trauma Care, Role-Based team like ICU Nurse, Critical Team like Code Blue.
- Not every specialty requires the same number of physicians or team. Building a team on demand and without any constraint for the number of providers will maximize providers’ efficiency.
On-Call Connect Information
Provider’s privacy of information is as crucial as HIPPA data.
- A nurse across different specialties should have the right information for the on-call schedule physician. Calling a provider who is not assigned will have a detrimental effect on an employee’s happiness.
- A nurse requiring to connect an on-call scheduler should not know the provider’s cell number; instead can look up the On-call schedule and connect with the physician.
Seasonal Factors
A shift planner should understand the seasonal factor to determine clinical capacity.
An on-call strategy based on seasonal factors can be:
- Time of year when cold and flu may require more on-call staff.
- Vacation time e.x. Thanksgiving and Christmas might have less staff and hence require more on-call physicians.
