How to Optimize Physician Scheduling for Emergency Medicine

Key Takeaways 

• Physician scheduling for the ED is complex and high-stakes, requiring both constant coverage and fairness in an environment that is often chaotic 
• Manual scheduling is inefficient and risky, often leading to errors, wasted hours, and burnout from unbalanced shift distribution 
• Automation makes scheduling smarter and faster, handling organizational requirements, swaps, preferences, and changes with ease 
• Integrating schedules with communication tools ensures the right provider gets the right message at the right time 

Imagine, if you will, trying to put together a schedule for a hospital emergency department. 24/7 coverage is a must, patient volumes can change on a dime, and demand often outstrips supply when it comes to provider availability. Schedulers seemingly have to juggle constant chaos to keep operations running smoothly. 

But the ED plays a unique and important role in a hospital setting, so despite the challenges, the scheduling must go on. Let’s take a deeper look at the top obstacles for ED scheduling and explore how a heaping helping of rules-based schedule automation can make it easier to keep up with demand without burning out your team.

Top Challenges with Hospital Emergency Medicine Scheduling 

Managing Patient Demand and Provider Workload 

The ED never sleeps, so your schedule can’t either. The unique nature of the ED means building a schedule that accounts for all the variables inherent to this intense and unpredictable environment. 

But that’s far from easy. ED schedulers have to: 

• Respond to constantly fluctuating patient volumes 
• Balance high demand with limited provider availability 
• Meet strict organizational policies and compliance standards 
• Distribute shifts fairly to prevent provider burnout 
• Account for provider preferences where possible 
• Avoid dangerous gaps in coverage, even during last-minute changes (frequent in the ED) 

These issues aren’t necessarily exclusive to the ED, but the high-stakes nature of emergency medicine does make the pressure more intense: 

• Increased stress levels in the ED can fuel burnout and lower provider satisfaction 
• Coverage gaps may contribute to sentinel events or compromised patient outcomes 
• Communication breaks down more easily in a high-stress, fast-paced environment 

Communication Challenges 

It’s worth noting that when schedules in the ED aren’t accurate, providers spend up to 35% of their communication time attempting—but failing—to reach the correct provider or search for their contact information.¹ Instead of focusing on patient care, clinicians are spending time:  

• Identifying the right provider to reach out to  
• Finding their contact information
• Determining the correct contact method

These inefficiencies waste time and can compromise care. Critical updates or consults may be delayed, putting patients at risk. If miscommunication becomes a routine part of the workflow, frustration builds among staff and morale can easily start to decline.

Managing Shift Fairness  

Creating a schedule that checks the requirement boxes is only half the battle. ED physicians also want schedule equity, and not just for work-life balance—sharing the patient load is just as important. 

Candace says there are a lot of variables to take into account if the end goal is to produce an equitable schedule. A scheduler needs to think about linked weekend shifts, holiday hours, making sure nights are covered, and so much more. 

And what about one more layer of complexity? Managing fair shifts also means accounting for individual provider preferences. One may like to work weekend shifts, and another may want to take the third Thursday night of each month off for a family obligation.

You can’t make a perfect schedule for every person every time, but you should try to incorporate as much of this customization as possible to show your physicians that their wellbeing matters.

Building ED Schedules Manually 

Now imagine managing all of these details by hand. While not impossible, it’s difficult to picture a mere mortal creating a perfectly balanced and mistake-free schedule that meets patient demands, accounts for provider preferences, and leaves no gaps in coverage. 

This scheduling work comes with a steep time-spent price tag. One study found that chief residents in emergency medicine may spend 40-60 hours a month creating resident shifts by hand.² Another study found that manually building a monthly schedule for emergency medicine residents in an academic medical center took approximately 12–16 hours, with an additional 10–12 hours required for edits and corrections. Automated scheduling reduced the total time to just 4–6 hours.³ 

How To Manage Emergency Department Schedules 

While the status quo suggests that managing ED schedules is inherently tricky, the process can be simplified in a few steps. If you’re scheduling by hand and can make the investment, implementing an automated ED scheduling solution can make the scheduling process easier.  

Consider a solution that:

• Has a mobile app: A printed schedule limits visibility—people may be forced to visit the nurse’s station or a whiteboard on the floor to reference it. If something changes and that printed copy is outdated, what happens next? Modern software can give care team members access to schedules on their mobile devices—literally in the palm of their hands. 

Emergency Department Scheduling Integrations 

Scheduling data becomes even more powerful when you share it across other critical hospital systems through integration. By enabling these connections, you can facilitate advanced clinical workflows, enable better team coordination, and make day-to-day operations that much smoother. 

Integrating with Outlook, for example, allows providers to see their shifts directly in Outlook, and it also gives administrative staff access to up-to-date provider schedules even if they don’t use the scheduling system. Integrating with the payroll system reduces duplicate data entry and ensures providers are paid accurately and on time.

But no single integration has a greater impact on ED workflows—or hospital workflows in general—than connecting your scheduling and clinical communication systems. 

Clinical Communication 

Getting your care team to communicate effectively starts with schedule accuracy, especially in the emergency department. Why? Because getting the right message to the right person at the right time means knowing who to communicate with and how to reach them. 

The most essential scheduling integration is with your clinical communication solution. Seconds matter in the ED, and successful communication can be the difference between a good outcome and a bad outcome for your patient. 

This integration ensures your team can:  

• See real-time shift and on-call schedules inside the clinical communication platform 
• Use role-based searches to find the correct on-call provider (e.g., send a consult request to “Cardiologist On Call”) 
• Communicate with the right people in real time to facilitate timely patient care  

At Beebe Healthcare, integrating scheduling and clinical communication workflows made a noticeable difference for patient care: “Beebe relies heavily on the accuracy of schedules, especially codes/alerts and rounding schedules. Providers working these shifts receive an instantaneous [secure] message for all stroke alerts, Code Blues, and rapid response alerts, so having an up-to-date schedule can drastically reduce confusion and expedite patient care.” 

Learn about other essential scheduling integrations below. 

What ED Schedulers Really Want 

Ultimately, Candace says emergency departments really want their schedules in their hands. That means quick, mobile access to real-time information. In other words, those printed schedules need to go.  

Emergency departments also need systems capable of building accurate, balanced schedules that are optimized around patient load and provider preferences. They need schedules that readily accommodate the unique needs of an ED rather than getting tripped up by them. 

Schedulers want a solution that’s flexible, fair, data-driven, and easy to use. If you’re on the hunt, learn what to consider when evaluating emergency department scheduling software.

Sources

1. Improving Patient Safety Through Provider Communication Strategy Enhancements. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: New Directions and Alternative Approaches—Vol. 3, Aug. 2008: ncbi.nlm.nih.cov/books/NBK43663 
2. Considering Burnout and Well-Being: Emergency Medicine Resident Shift Scheduling Platform and Satisfaction Insights from a Quality Improvement Project. National Library of Medicine: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10970494 
3. Automation Improves Schedule Quality and Increases Scheduling Efficiency for Residents. National Library of Medicine: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4763379/