Top Healthcare Scheduling Best Practices

A well-crafted physician schedule isn’t just a calendar—it’s the heartbeat of operational success. 

Healthcare administrators face the complex challenge of harmonizing provider availability, patient needs, and organizational objectives. One misstep in this delicate balance can affect everything from patient care to staff satisfaction. 

During the 2024 Lightning Bolt User Summit, healthcare leaders tackled provider scheduling challenges head on. From their knowledge, we’ve summarized four key insights that emerged from this transformative event ⬇️

Key Takeaways for Healthcare Scheduling Workflows 

• Harness intelligent integrations with other key clinical systems (like payroll, clinical communication, EHR, and more) to unify health systems of all sizes
• Look for vendors who have clinical knowledge and experience and provide nothing less than white-glove customer support
• Ensure you have access to your schedule data, as it can give deep insight into resource utilization and workflow weaknesses
• Ensure all solutions are scalable with the growth of your health system or organization 

Crucial Healthcare Scheduling Integrations 

Integrations are crucial. They connect disparate healthcare solutions and allow them to share data across multiple platforms. This ensures care teams have access to the most accurate information for the highest quality care delivery possible.  

But integrations do more than connect care tools. Used correctly, they help a health system make better decisions and reduce errors in many areas. Ultimately, integrations foster collaboration and create a more connected, effective healthcare ecosystem. 

Yet, some integrations are more potent than others, which scheduling pros know to be true.  

You’re likely struggling to ensure your providers work fair shifts, care teams communicate effectively, and provider supply matches patient demand. One specific integration makes this much easier—and more accurate. 

Scheduling.

With access to real-time, accurate schedules, staff work efficiently. They know their shifts are equitable and they have a healthy work-life balance. They have the time they need to see each patient without being rushed, and they even have enough time to finish their administrative tasks. 

Then, imagine that an organization unifies its optimized scheduling software with its clinical communication solution. Now, when a physician needs to consult the on-call radiologist, they can confidently contact the right person without confusion or delays and send them a message that includes patient context in a few clicks. 

Why? Because their communication system is deeply embedded with their accurate scheduling system. 

This eliminates errors and simplifies clinical workflows for the entire care team. It even helps care teams deliver fast care by streamlining their ability to communicate accurately with one another.  

In another example, Dr. Nick Perkins, Associate Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Prisma Health, demonstrates the power of integration in ensuring accurate pay for his providers. Their hospitalists work custom hours, with additional hours requiring special overtime pay.

Before implementing optimized scheduling software, processing hospitalist pay took 5-10 days on average. Now, schedulers can pull “tallies” to see real-time data on hospitalist shifts and overtime hours, driving payroll accuracy for more than 120 physicians. 

 This has led to: 

• A 90% reduction in processing time
• Reduced workload for physicians and payroll administrators
• Significantly improved payroll accuracy
• Elimination of manual review processes
• Drastically reduced scheduling errors 

The most effective organizations use a unified scheduling system that integrates with other systems for streamlined operations. Here are a few healthcare system integrations to consider:

• Payroll Systems: Automating time tracking, overtime calculations, and compensation management to ensure accurate and timely provider payment
• Clinical Communication Platforms: Enabling real-time coordination between care team members and ensuring messages reach the right provider at the right time
• Electronic Health Records (EHR): Synchronizing provider availability with patient appointments and clinical workflows
• Critical Alert Systems: Routing urgent notifications to the appropriate on-call providers without creating alert fatigue
• Operator Console/Call Center Systems: Streamlining patient-provider communication and reducing response times 

Partner with Clinical Workflow Experts 

We all need customer support at times. It’s an essential component to most tools and software we use today in health systems of all sizes. And it’s essential for a reason—if a problem arises that the user can’t solve, they’re stuck.  

The truth: customer support is only as good as the people providing the support service.  

That begs a few questions: 

• What makes a vendor good?
• What defines good customer support?
• What do health organizations need from vendor support teams? 

No matter the solution or vendor, a strong partnership is essential for success. It’s not just about having support when things go wrong—it’s about continuously improving workflows to enhance patient care and staff operations. 

That’s why clinical support teams should be clinical workflow experts. 

Healthcare leaders are solving the problem of subpar customer service by partnering with vendors who provide nothing less than white-glove service. These vendors have the right people behind their technology, people who have direct or near direct clinical experience and healthcare knowledge.  

The top things health organizations want in an IT vendor are proactive ownership of client issues, the ability to achieve outcomes, quality of upgrade experiences, and a good roadmap experience.¹ That said, the pros will only utilize vendors who offer: 

Proactive Partnership: 

• Regular system health checks and performance optimization
• Customized training programs for new staff and system updates
• Quarterly strategic planning sessions to align technology with organizational goals 

Comprehensive Support: 

• 24/7 availability for handling critical issues
• Quick response times for rapid resolution
• Specialized knowledge to support care team workflows 

Specialized Healthcare Expertise: 

• Integration expertise for seamless connection with other solutions
• Training and resources for ongoing education
• Scalable solutions for organizations of all sizes
• Empathy and communication skills to support staff in high-stakes healthcare environments 

For systems requiring enterprise-level support, dedicated customer support teams can help establish central governance and internal superusers to ensure rules and standards are followed even when support isn’t immediately available. 

How to Harness the Power of Scheduling Data 

Data-driven decision making has transformed scheduling from an administrative task into a strategic advantage. Data from within your schedule offers valuable insights that can optimize workflows throughout your system—from scheduling processes and resident management to care delivery, resource utilization, and staffing levels. 

That said, many health systems don’t utilize their scheduling data accurately. The pros know that data can give deeper insight into resource utilization and workflow weaknesses. 

Data utilization use cases include: 

• Staffing optimization: Analyzing trends in patient volume to align staffing levels with patient demand
• Resource allocation: Ensuring the right specialists, equipment, and rooms are available when needed
• Predictive analytics: Identifying patterns to forecast busy periods to proactively adjust schedules
• Workload balance: Distribute shifts equitably to prevent burnout and improve physician satisfaction 

Implement Scalable Scheduling Software 

Too often, organizations will purchase and implement a useful IT solution, but after a few years, the solution can’t keep up with the number of patients a system is seeing or providers using the technology. 

That’s why professionals look for healthcare scheduling software that are scalable and can grow at the same pace as the organization. 

No matter if it’s a small practice or a multi-state enterprise system, scalability is essential to growth. While a solution may work for a health system today, will it accommodate system growth in the next year? The next five years? The next decade? 

Scalable solutions allow a healthcare organization to:  

• Utilize their existing, familiar technology year over year
• Avoid retraining admins and end users on new tools
• Cut costs by not having to buy new solutions every few years
• Adjust best practices to scale instead of starting over with new techniques 

Financially, scalability cuts major costs in the healthcare setting. The average yearly IT budget for hospitals in the US was $9.2 million in 2024,² but imagine how much a system could save if they purchased one solution that lasted them a lifetime. With the average cost of purchasing and installing a new EHR ranging from $15,000 to $70,000 per provider,³ systems can’t afford to purchase, implement, and replace software frequently.  

The takeaway: Organizations need to consider the long-term scalability of the solutions they buy, no matter the IT use. Investing in scalable solutions from the start prevents the costly cycle of repeatedly upgrading to new software as your organization expands. The pros say a vendor should scale with a customer from day one. 

One health system experienced this firsthand when rapid growth required them to schedule their radiologists across multiple locations within a short timeframe. Using automated scheduling software, they successfully managed this transition. 

The system leveraged existing data to:  

• Calculate provider needs at additional facilities
• Create schedules well in advance
• Meet patient demand
• Optimize provider time
• Account for travel time between appointments
• Integrate new providers as the system expanded
• Ensure accurate payroll based on shift type 

The resulting schedule remains accessible via public link, allowing all staff to view provider locations in real time. 

When selecting a scheduling solution, look beyond current needs to future possibilities. The ideal system should handle both basic departmental scheduling and the most complex system-wide requirements while accounting for plans for expansion into new hospitals and ambulatory services. 

Sources:

1. The Top 4 Things Healthcare Organizations Want in an IT Vendor, Dimensional Insight: https://www.dimins.com/blog/2023/09/18/top-4-things-healthcare-organizations-want-it-vendor/#:~:text=Topping%20the%20list%20of%20priorities,resolved%20in%20under%20two%20days.
2. Hospitals with the highest IT expenses, Definitive Healthcare: https://www.definitivehc.com/resources/healthcare-insights/25-hospitals-highest-operating-budget#:~:text=The%20average%20IT%20operating%20expense,highest%20estimated%20IT%20operating%20budgets.
3. The Five Main Components of EHR Implementation, Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy: https://www.healthit.gov/faq/how-much-going-cost-me#footnote-1