Still, providers weren’t always happy.

With most of his team covering 3 hospitals and 5 surgery centers, the schedule was already complex. Add the inevitable last-minute changes and necessary blocks for travel time, and it felt less like scheduling and more like untangling a knot.

John built schedules manually in Excel before exporting the PDF into a basic web-based tool that didn’t offer much help. It didn’t support real-time updates—meaning changes weren’t immediately visible to others—and schedules could only be built one week at a time. Before one week even wrapped up, he was already starting the next.

John wanted automation, actual real-time visibility, and a way to plan ahead without sacrificing provider requests. After switching to PerfectServe’s Lightning Bolt Scheduling, “90% of the work” came off his plate. For the first time, every provider across every location was on the same platform.

Benefits of Better Healthcare
Scheduling Software

Time Saved Building Schedules

Transitioning to anesthesia scheduling software was a smooth process thanks to Paje Bishop, one of Lightning Bolt’s many dedicated technical consultants. With her help, John was able to create custom rules, which act like a blueprint as the algorithm pieces the best schedule together. This meant he could ditch the painful Excel process.

Improved Vacation Management

Before, all time-off requests had to be submitted on a one-off basis, and they weren’t managed inside the scheduling interface. That meant John had to keep track of all requests to make sure they were reflected in the appropriate schedule. When scheduling isn’t even your primary job, little annoyances like this can add up fast.

Now, John can manage vacation time in Lightning Bolt with a much simpler and more reliable workflow. Almost all users submit their time-off requests in the platform, and John can approve them in just a few clicks. Once requests are “on the books,” schedules are automatically built around them.

Mobile Device Schedule Management

Lightning Bolt has both desktop and mobile apps, so John can manage the schedule anywhere, anytime—even from his phone. The real-time schedule is also available via a public link, which gives providers—and anyone else who needs to know the group’s schedule—easy access from any device.

“Building the schedule takes much less time with Lightning Bolt,” John said. “Thanks to the built-in rules, what used to take an hour minimum now takes a matter of minutes.”

Extended Schedule Horizon

Because Lightning Bolt uses an intelligent healthcare scheduling algorithm, John can build schedules 6 months in advance instead of sprinting through the old weekly scramble. This saves him time and gives providers a longer view of their schedules, which allows them to more easily plan their lives inside and outside of work. It also gives patients the chance to schedule appointments further in advance.

Supporting Group Growth

As Midwest Physician Anesthesia Services continues to grow, Lightning Bolt easily integrates new CRNAs and MDs into the scheduling process. New team members can be added without disrupting previously published schedules—even those completed months in advance.

A CRNA Scheduling Solution That Saves Time and Reduces Stress

Switching to a scheduling platform built specifically for the complex needs of a group like Midwest Physician Anesthesia Services has transformed scheduling for John Krall and his team. Time-off requests are easier to manage, schedules can be planned months in advance, and what once required hours of manual work now takes minutes.

Providers across all locations now work from a single scheduling platform, creating better visibility across the group and allowing schedules to be built months in advance. That long-range view helps promote balance and predictability for providers, while Lightning Bolt ensures scheduling remains accurate and effortless as the organization continues to grow—freeing John and his team to focus on what matters most: patient care.

The post Finding a Better CRNA Scheduling Solution appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Dr. Katherine Noble, M.D. (“Dr. Katy”), is the founder and managing partner of Sound Beach Pediatrics, serving families in lower Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Westchester County, New York, for over nine years. Her passion for healthcare automation began when she realized technology could help her launch, manage, and grow her practice more efficiently.

In 2016, Dr. Katy implemented PerfectServe’s medical answering service, known as Practice Communication, quickly seeing how it streamlined HIPAA-compliant messaging and improved after-hours call management. She found the app easy to use, reducing stress and minimizing communication errors by bypassing human operators. The ability to review recorded calls and contact information added further value. When her local hospital adopted PerfectServe, she was excited to seamlessly align the hospital’s on-call schedule with her practice’s template.

“Taking call is a very critical piece of my practice,” Dr. Katy said. “[Call] can create stress and disruption. Any cost-effective way to reduce that burden can improve physician quality of life and our ability to recruit new providers.”

—Dr. Katherine Noble | Founder of Sound Beach Pediatrics

Challenge

PerfectServe helped Sound Beach Pediatrics handle the increasing number of inbound after-hours calls without difficulty. As Dr. Katy’s practice grew, she hired more physicians to support her patient load. She quickly realized that an advanced practice scheduling solution would be needed to create more complex schedules for her providers, which included on-call and hospital rounding shifts. Patients also expressed a desire to schedule appointments further in advance, so the scheduling solution needed to be intelligent, versatile, and easy to use.

Dr. Katy needed a solution that could also:

• Balance the call schedule, including weekend coverage and holidays
• Prevent gaps in patient care and minimize mistakes
• Accommodate customizable physician schedules based on physician preferences, such as preferred number of shifts a week or preferred days off each month
• Guarantee an appropriate balance between physician and clinical support staff schedules
• Empower the nurse manager to manage shifts for an increasing number of part-time nurses and medical assistants
• Integrate with the existing answering service to ensure phone calls after hours were always directed to the correct provider on call

In 2018, she implemented PerfectServe’s Lightning Bolt Scheduling solution in her own practice. She took comfort in knowing this system was used with great success by her residency program at a large children’s hospital. The software allowed her to optimize provider schedules and ensure equity and transparency in the on-call schedule.

“[The integration] is an efficient, clean method to organize call. It’s easy for families to use and easy for physicians to use,” Dr. Katy said. “I think the pricing has been very fair. I feel like I’m getting a great value [from PerfectServe].”

—Dr. Katherine Noble | Founder of Sound Beach Pediatrics

Conclusion

With the power of Lightning Bolt and Practice Communication at her fingertips, Dr. Katy sees everything from a bird’s-eye view as a practice owner. She can make wise scheduling decisions for her growing practice while improving staff and physician satisfaction with better communication processes.

For patients, calling the practice is stress free. They know they’ll be guided to the right destination, whether they’ve got an urgent or non-urgent issue to discuss. This is a real-life example of how healthcare technology and automation can make it easier for medical professionals to do their jobs while improving access to care for patients.

The post How Healthcare Automation Helped Her Practice Grow appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Pacific Imaging Associates (PIA), formed from the merger of two radiology practices, serves a number of partnering hospitals and clinics in the Portland area. The schedule is built by Dr. Stephen Tang, who has the responsibility of ensuring that 15 providers are appropriately scheduled to accommodate patient volumes and support access. Dr. Tang used popular scheduling technology to do this work, but the results almost always led to frustration—both for Dr. Tang and the clinicians in his practice.

Challenges

Though the previous solution automated the scheduling process, its limited functionality created schedules that often led to overworked clinicians and inequitable shifts. Even with manual intervention, the solution’s scheduling algorithm often worked incorrectly, and Dr. Tang’s lack of back-end administrative privileges prevented him from having full control over schedule outputs.

When Dr. Tang reached out to customer support for help, he was met with inconsistent service and long wait times. Occasionally, customer support was completely unavailable. The frustration he experienced often caused him to build the schedule by hand. This was tedious, but it was still faster than slogging through an automated build that required him to comb through the schedule after the fact to fix any glaring issues.

Implementation

Dr. Tang selected PerfectServe’s Lightning Bolt Scheduling solution for its optimization capabilities. Since implementation, PIA has used the solution to auto-generate their call schedules and equalize shifts among providers.

“[With our previous solution], if the rules didn’t work and I needed to re-run the schedule, I would have to start the whole thing over from scratch.”

—Dr. Stephen Tang

Results

Through the implementation of Lightning Bolt, PIA has transformed its scheduling processes, achieving unprecedented efficiency, accuracy, and flexibility. From optimizing call assignments to enhancing schedule accessibility, Lightning Bolt has empowered PIA to streamline its operations and ensure fair and balanced workloads across the team. Here are some key areas where these changes have made a substantial impact:

Conclusion

Merging two practices comes with its own set of unique challenges, but inefficient scheduling workflows don’t have to be on the list. By implementing PerfectServe’s Lightning Bolt Scheduling, PIA was able to save time, balance shifts, and optimize schedules, leading to a better schedule-building experience and happier clinicians across the board.

“Lightning Bolt’s tally and reporting system is more intuitive, and it’s much easier to run the report I need.”

—Dr. Stephen Tang

The post How to Optimize Provider Scheduling and Communication for Radiology appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Michigan-based Lansing Pediatric Associates has provided pediatric care to the Lansing community for over 50 years. The practice provides in-person and virtual well-child care and sports medicine for children of all ages.

Challenge

For many years, one of Lansing Pediatric’s physicians manually scheduled the practice’s nine physicians and three nurse practitioners using Excel. In addition to the frustration caused by manual schedule builds, the practice frequently faced missed or last-minute changes that weren’t properly reflected on distributed versions of the schedule. The schedule was made four to six months in advance and texted out to providers, meaning there was no central access point to see the correct, most up-to-date version. 

While administrators gathered vacation requests in advance of manually creating the schedule, ensuring equitable shift allocation was a challenge. Furthermore, if providers needed to take personal time or swap shifts outside of the initial schedule creation process, this required admins to rework the schedule and resend a static copy. It was time to drop the manual process and implement a tech-enabled solution that would optimize the schedule from start to finish.

Choosing the Right Scheduling Solution

Like all practices, Lansing Pediatrics has unique requirements, so Practice Administrator Cory Amendt explored multiple scheduling solutions to find the one that could best accommodate his group’s needs. Though other solutions on the market offer automation, Lightning Bolt’s inherent optimization capabilities ensured Cory’s group would get schedules that were equitable and accommodated the providers’ preferences.

“He took the time to understand what we were trying to do.”

– Cory Amendt, Practice Administrator

Implementation

To get the scheduling system up and running at Lansing Pediatric, a dedicated technical consultant employed Lightning Bolt’s white-glove customer service model to train Cory and others on how to use all of the platform’s features. The consultant also helped set up the initial rules that Lightning Bolt would use to begin building schedules. “He took the time to understand what we were trying to do and was able to put the schedule together,” Cory said.

Results

Auto-Generation and Optimization

With Lightning Bolt implemented, the previously manual process of building and managing the schedule has been completely replaced. With the simple click of a button, Lightning Bolt now assembles the best possible schedule in a matter of minutes. Cory can make edits by hand if needed, but because the optimized solution manages time-off requests, swaps, and other unique rules—such as each provider having one work day off per week—with ease, it’s frequently not necessary.

Optimizing Provider Utilization

Lightning Bolt is a tool that builds provider schedules, but for many practices, it’s not just about having a complete schedule—it’s about having the best schedule. For Lansing Pediatrics, that meant maximizing the number of providers in the building based on the quantity of available rooms. It sounds like a fairly straightforward task, but when you can use technology to optimize workforce utilization, everybody benefits. Lightning Bolt allows Lansing Pediatric to find the sweet spot between having too many providers and not enough providers on any given day.

Improved Patient Scheduling

Lightning Bolt was implemented to streamline the provider scheduling side of the house, but patient scheduling has been positively impacted, too. Thanks to more accurate provider schedules that are built further in advance, Lansing Pediatric can now schedule patients more proactively as well. This is a boon for patient satisfaction and greatly increases access to care appointments, sometimes allowing patients to schedule visits a year ahead of time.

Time Savings and Efficiency

The previous scheduler used to spend many hours building the schedules in Excel. With Lightning Bolt, that time has dropped dramatically. The schedule requirements unique to Lansing Pediatric were entered during implementation, and rules were created inside of Lightning Bolt to ensure those needs are always met with each schedule build. That means Cory simply hits the “auto-generate” button today, and an optimized, gapless schedule is created in minutes. Cory expressed deep satisfaction with the much-needed efficiency Lightning Bolt brings to the scheduling process, describing the time saved as immeasurable.

“Before Lightning Bolt, the scheduler would have to mentally prepare for and plan what day she would have to create the schedule to sit down and start working on it—trying to clear her schedule, clear her time with her family,” Cory said. “[This was] all to make sure she had dedicated focus time to create the schedule. The things that she was giving up because she needed to have that dedicated time to write the schedule—I don’t even think you could measure the savings.“

Lightning Bolt also boosted efficiency by enabling real-time schedule sharing. Providers no longer have to dig through old text messages to find the schedule, which was always a recipe for frustration. Today, providers have easy access to a schedule link that shows them who’s working each shift. The schedule is updated in real time based on swaps, time-off requests, and other inputs.

Provider Satisfaction

Offering providers greater schedule visibility allows them to plan ahead and exert more control over their lives outside of work. For example, providers at Lansing Pediatric work on a rounding schedule, meaning each provider rounds for a full week at a time. Because they know in advance when they’ll be rounding, they have more freedom to plan time off, family vacations, and days when it might be ideal to swap a shift with another provider. Before Lightning Bolt, they only had four to six months of schedule visibility, but today, they can see up to a year into the future.

Another convenient benefit is the ability for providers to submit shift-swap and time-off requests using the Lightning Bolt mobile app. In just a few taps, they can submit a request, and when accepted, the schedule is adjusted in real time. Some requests—such as weekend call swaps— are completely automated, which means a scheduler doesn’t have to approve them. This saves time on the scheduler’s side, eliminating the need to make schedule changes across the weekend, and gives providers yet another layer of control over their schedules.

Pre-Lightning Bolt, providers checked schedules through text messages. Today, 100% of providers are using the Lightning Bolt app, where they can access their schedules and send in shift change requests on the fly. Cory said app access has been a major source of satisfaction for all providers.

Reporting and Equalization

With the manual process, there was no way to effectively manage every provider’s time off and change requests, which also meant it was nearly impossible to know if the schedule was equitable for each provider. The previous scheduler had no easy way to accurately track shifts worked over time—she could only do her best.

Today, Lansing Pediatric uses Lightning Bolt to create reports to ensure equitable shifts and properly balanced time off. They give providers a day off each week, and Lightning Bolt’s tally function can verify that schedules closely adhere to this rule.

Lightning Bolt is also able to equalize shifts over time, meaning that weekend call and rounding shifts are spread evenly among the team. If a provider works a lighter schedule one month, Lightning Bolt doesn’t just forget. Over time, it will ensure that other providers also receive the same amount of time off.

Customer Service

Lightning Bolt is a powerful tool, but PerfectServe understands that having an effective customer support team is just as crucial to customer success as having the right technology. To that end, Lansing Pediatric Associates is delighted by the thoughtful attention they received throughout the implementation phase and beyond. The technical consultant was present from day one, helping Cory understand exactly how to tap Lightning Bolt’s functionality for all of Lansing Pediatric’s scheduling needs.

Today, the same technical consultant is still a dedicated support resource for the Lansing Pediatric team, and he works with them whenever they need assistance or have questions about their schedule. This level of service is the standard for all Lightning Bolt customers.

Conclusion

For Lansing Pediatrics Associates, Lightning Bolt was instrumental in allowing them to equitably schedule providers much further in advance than their previous manual workflow. The solution also improved capacity management for the practice by tying each room to a specific provider, and it brought greater flexibility and transparency to the patient scheduling process. Taken together, these benefits have made schedulers’ lives much less complicated while enhancing both patient satisfaction and work-life balance for providers.

From the simplest to the most complex shift requirements, switching to Lightning Bolt for schedule builds offers numerous—and sometimes unexpected—benefits. Other scheduling vendors offer automation, but Lightning Bolt’s unique scheduling algorithm, consistent and fair pricing, efficient implementation, user friendly desktop and mobile apps, and white-glove customer service stand out among the rest.

The post How Optimized Provider Scheduling Improves Patient and Room Scheduling appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Background

Alyssa Fitch, Genesis Foot and Ankle’s Practice Manager, used to build call schedules manually. After the practice was acquired by Genesis HealthCare System, Alyssa knew she needed new tools to modernize their provider scheduling workflows to more effectively manage her providers.

Challenge

Before the practice joined the Genesis HealthCare system, Alyssa would buy a paper calendar for the year, write out the entire schedule, and get provider feedback. She would then type the schedule up, print it out for her providers, and fax it to Patty Alexander, the switchboard operator.

This usually took three to four weeks to complete during the months of November and December. At some point, Alyssa switched to building shift schedules for six months at a time, but even then, the process still took one to two weeks from start to finish.

Any time changes had to be made, Alyssa would edit the schedule by hand, print out new schedules, and fax the updates to Patty. This process caused many issues with both switchboard workflows and call coverage:

1. Providers commonly needed last-minute adjustments to their schedules, meaning changes were rushed and several iterations of the schedule were printed and distributed before it was truly final.
2. On Fridays, Alyssa would fax changes to Patty and confirm via text message that they had been sent. The practice had to “cross their fingers” that changes were received in time and that no emergencies would happen—and no larger changes would be needed—over the weekend.
3. If a change was needed over the weekend, providers had to call Patty directly. Patty then had to make changes to the printed schedule by hand.
4. Alyssa did her best to make schedules as fair as possible, but manual schedule builds made this exceedingly difficult. It was hard to audit previous schedules to examine trends, and leaving it up to one person to completely account for every provider preference, every time-off request, and every other relevant scheduling detail is a tall order. Mistakes are just harder to avoid with manual scheduling processes.

Implementation

When the practice merged with Genesis, Alyssa was particularly excited to implement Lightning Bolt since it would give them a chance to revamp their scheduling process from start to finish.

After going live, the solution could auto-generate the schedule in six-month blocks, which makes it much quicker and easier for Alyssa to input adjustments after the fact.

Now, when changes are made to the schedule, Patty no longer has to check for a fax from Alyssa—she has her own list view of the call schedule inside the Lightning Bolt application. This also means that Patty never has to make schedule changes on her end.

“Eliminating the faxing workflow has been really nice,” Alyssa said. “It’s great to have [the call schedule] right there in front of us on the computer.”

During the implementation process, Alyssa’s dedicated Technical Consultant, Sam Snider, was there to get Genesis Foot and Ankle up and running on Lightning Bolt, which includes training end users on the system. Alyssa simply sent Sam a copy of the prior year’s schedule, and he was able to build the call schedule out in a few days.

Learning a new solution can be an uphill battle, but Lightning Bolt prioritizes education and ease of use to lower this threshold. Throughout the implementation process, Sam provided personalized training sessions for Genesis Foot and Ankle users.

Because Alyssa is the only practice manager, she wasn’t able to attend every training session. But thanks to the quality of the training sessions she did attend, the overall intuitiveness of the Lightning Bolt platform, and Sam’s consistent support, her confidence in the process never waned.

“Even though I missed [some training sessions], I was confident because [the system] was so easy, and having Sam made it easy to reach out whenever an issue came up.”

Results

Auto-Generation
Lightning Bolt now auto-generates the practice’s schedule, and with all of the allocation and equalization rules in place, call schedules are now fully balanced and equalized. When changes are necessary, Alyssa can take care of them in just a few minutes. At the request of her providers, Alyssa still prints physical copies of the schedule, but because changes are less common, it’s rare that she has to print more than once.

Time Savings
Before Lightning Bolt, Alyssa typically spent weeks writing out the schedule and getting feedback from her providers. Now, she hits the auto-generate button and watches the schedule populate in a matter of minutes.

“I like the auto-population feature of Lightning Bolt. Now, [the process of building the schedule] is not long at all. I hit generate and touch base with the providers. If I need to make changes, it’s super quick.”

Switchboard operator Patty now sees any schedule changes in her own list view, which means Alyssa no longer has to fax everything to her. This eliminates extra phone calls and texts.

Scalability
As with any practice, Genesis Foot and Ankle occasionally has to onboard a new provider. Because the Lightning Bolt system takes a provider’s prior shift patterns into account to optimize and balance the schedule, it’s reasonable to think that new providers—who have no history in the system—may be at a bit of a disadvantage. But that’s not the case with Lightning Bolt, which can “act” as though new providers have worked a number of shifts already to ensure they won’t receive a disproportionate number of assignments to make up for a perceived gap. No matter when a new provider joins the team—be it at the start of a six-month schedule block or in the last month—Lightning Bolt’s auto-generation feature can accommodate them fairly.

Before and After

Conclusion

Manual scheduling is a common practice that aims to build fair and accurate shift schedules using an outdated approach. This means many healthcare organizations still face challenges that echo Genesis Foot and Ankle’s previous scheduling difficulties: broken or incomplete schedules, lost shift change requests, and a drawn-out, needlessly complicated process for building on-call schedules. Providers often work in multiple locations, which means manual scheduling only becomes more difficult, and providers and schedulers usually pay the price.

Investing in Lightning Bolt’s optimized scheduling software has been a powerful process improvement step for Genesis HealthCare. By implementing a rule-based scheduling solution, Genesis has equipped all of its locations with an automated scheduling platform that saves provider time, improves scheduling accuracy, boosts provider satisfaction, simplifies daily operations across multiple care sites, and provides a dedicated consultant team to help users when issues or questions pop up. Alyssa, Patty, and all of the providers they work with at Genesis Foot and Ankle are happy to be cured of their scheduling ills with a proper dose of Lightning Bolt technology.

The post How to Create Scalable, Transparent Schedules with Optimized Scheduling Software appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Background

Kate Jewell is the Practice Manager for the Center of Surgical Excellence at Genesis HealthCare System. As part of this role, she manages the quarterly schedule for 11 physicians and 6 APPs.

Challenges

Prior to Lightning Bolt, Kate and her Medical Director, Dr. Rothermel, put the group’s schedule together manually using Microsoft Word. Together, they fielded incoming requests from providers and—combined with knowledge about the group’s broader staffing and coverage requirements—built schedules that often had to be checked, adjusted, and rechecked before finalizing.

Finding a New Solution

Kate had previous experience building schedules by hand, so when she joined Genesis HealthCare’s Center of Surgical Excellence, she was eager to transition to a digital solution. Much to her delight, Genesis HealthCare had already made the decision to deploy Lightning Bolt across the enterprise in support of enhancing the on-call workflow for the transfer center.

Implementation

As part of the Lightning Bolt implementation process, Kate was able to use the software to keep a record of provider preferences and requests for the very first time. Within a few months, Kate and the Lightning Bolt implementation team were able to enter all of the rules, provider preferences, and unique requirements for her group. Kate quickly learned how easy it was to manage provider requests, enter rules and preferences, and auto-generate schedules.

Kate worked closely with her Lightning Bolt consultant to learn the ins and outs of the new system. The dedicated Customer Success team answered all of her questions and stood ready to support other Genesis users as needed. Despite time zone discrepancies and other potential roadblocks, the two sides were constantly in sync to make sure questions were resolved in a timely manner.

“[I] particularly loved the training material and being set up with someone to work through my group’s needs,” Kate said. “Everything went really smoothly. It was easy for me to show the doctors how to do things in Lightning Bolt. I liked it a whole lot better than doing the paper schedules. The schedules were so involved and complicated that I couldn’t imagine having to do it on paper.”

Results

By using Lightning Bolt’s rule-based scheduling capabilities, Kate was able to introduce provider preferences and shift equalization to optimize all components of the schedule. Fairer, more balanced schedules drove increased provider satisfaction, and contributed to better work-life balance. As an added bonus, Kate also drastically reduced the time it takes to create and make changes to the schedule: “[The schedule] is now generated in five minutes, and it flowed like we had done it ourselves.” No more piecing preferences and requests together by hand to get all of the details right, and no more headaches using Microsoft Word.

From Dr. Rothermel’s perspective, the autogenerative capabilities allowed for quick turnaround times for schedules, and automatic updates meant no one had to set time aside to “go back and redo if a later request [came] in.” With Lightning Bolt, changes can be made with a simple click, and the schedule is automatically updated for all users. Anyone who’s managed a schedule knows that updates aren’t unusual, so simplifying this process immediately gave time back to Dr. Rothermel.

Streamlined Communication

Because Genesis didn’t utilize a cloud-based scheduling platform before Lightning Bolt, any time changes were made to the schedule, Kate had to send an email to the providers who were affected and other interested parties, including the switchboard, her director, and clinical staff. It also meant that, when she received one of the numerous daily emails with requests, swaps, and changes, she had to translate them into the Word document schedule. The frequency of changes during the week, combined with the manual notification process, increased the potential for errors.

Today, the changes Kate makes in Lightning Bolt are instantly visible to everyone, from the switchboard team on down. Providers also get change notifications via email and the Lightning Bolt mobile app, and sometimes both depending on the preferences they’ve set. Additionally, when a provider wants to request a shift or make a swap, they can now input the request in Lightning Bolt, and Kate receives a notification to either approve or deny the request. Kate noted that the ability to respond in the mobile app is especially handy when she’s away from her desk and an urgent request pops up.

She also emphasized that the improvement in communication with the switchboard “has been the biggest blessing.” Prior to Lightning Bolt, communication errors were tough to avoid, as switchboard operators sometimes found themselves equipped with outdated versions of the schedule. This meant contacting the wrong provider at some point was almost an inevitability.

Shift Transparency and Balance

Before Lightning Bolt, Kate and Dr. Rothermel kept what they called “call scorecards.” These scorecards were used to hand-track monthly call shifts worked across all providers in an effort to maintain some semblance of balance. Despite their best efforts, the process was imperfect—it led to shift imbalance and inaccurate tracking of shifts scheduled versus shifts worked.

Lightning Bolt replaced the call scorecard altogether, and shift tracking became much easier because the solution’s reporting functionality makes it much easier to visualize shifts and hours worked by every provider. Lightning Bolt now accurately tracks shifts scheduled and worked, which ensures providers are properly compensated for extra call nights and weekend shifts. Because everyone has access to the most current schedule at all times, the shift to Lightning Bolt has also fostered a better sense of transparency and fairness throughout the group.

Before and After Lightning Bolt

Outcomes after launching new technology can sometimes feel a bit abstract, but Lightning Bolt has yielded very tangible results for the Center of Surgical Excellence in a number of areas. The chart below offers a broad look at how various workflows and capabilities evolved after the Lightning Bolt implementation.

Conclusion

Though manual scheduling is still a common practice for many healthcare organizations, it’s a dated approach that takes too much time, yields too many mistakes, and creates far too much frustration. Schedulers like Kate often waste an immense amount of excess time manually tracking requests, with no guarantee all requests are addressed or accurate. Whether the schedule is for one specialty or an entire health system, time gets wasted, requests get lost, calls get misrouted, and providers handle the brunt of these issues.

By making an enterprise shift to Lightning Bolt, Genesis HealthCare System has equipped all of its locations—and key team members like Kate and Dr. Rothermel—with a tool that simultaneously saves a significant chunk of time, boosts provider satisfaction by creating better schedules, and improves daily operations by integrating with other clinical systems and streamlining important workflows. In a healthcare landscape where time is almost always of the essence, that’s a technology investment they couldn’t afford not to make.

The post How to Promote Efficiency, Transparency, and Equity with Optimized Provider Scheduling appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Ontario-based Clear Medical Imaging offers a wide range of diagnostic imaging services, with more than 100 medical and administrative team members spread out across a network of 13 independent health facilities performing over 350,000 studies per year. The group has relationships with over 1,200 referring providers and offers patients a streamlined process for medical imaging with a commitment to compassionate care.

Challenges

As is the case with many healthcare organizations, provider scheduling was a particular challenge for Clear Medical Imaging. The group isn’t large, but their schedule is complicated, with one hospital and 12 clinic shifts to cover every day. Schedule creation—a time- consuming, complex, and needlessly frustrating manual process that relied on Excel—ultimately fell to one nurse.

Despite the nurse’s best efforts and intentions, schedules were frequently unbalanced and required manual edits. Time-off requests were also managed by hand, leading to workflow breakdowns that occasionally prevented providers from taking much-needed time away from the office.

Though the schedule worked well when coverage was needed for understaffed shifts, some wondered if favoritism and preferential scheduling practices were contributing to less-than-ideal schedules. Clear Medical Imaging needed a solution that would speed up the scheduling (and schedule maintenance) process while distributing shifts in a fairer, more equitable way.

Solution

After exploring multiple options, Clear Medical Imaging decided to implement PerfectServe’s Lightning Bolt Scheduling solution.

Clear Medical Imaging also appreciated Lightning Bolt’s ease of use for shift swaps and its rules-driven scheduling algorithm.

Results

Time Savings

• Clear Medical Imaging’s schedule creation time dropped from 3-5 hours to just 1 hour per month

Reducing Burnout by Increasing Control

• Providers’ individual preferences can now be considered during schedule creation, which gives them a greater sense of control
• Radiologists can easily complete schedule swaps and other edits in the Lightning Bolt app
• Scheduling rules were put into place to ensure the following:
  • Appropriate spacing between on-call assignments to avoid back-to-back weekend or evening shifts
  • On-site assignments for different locations are not scheduled together
  • Limits to the number of on-site, high-volume assignments scheduled per week
  • Limits to the number of shifts worked per day

Streamlined Time-Off Requests Increase Approval Rate

• The automated process for time-off requests yielded far greater accuracy and a higher approval rate

Reliable, Equitable Schedules

• Shifts at Clear Medical Imaging are now more equitably distributed among providers
• Because schedules are being auto-generated by a rules-based technology solution, any suspicion of favoritism or bias has dissipated

Conclusion

Because of an outdated manual scheduling process, Clear Medical Imaging was experiencing the pain of inequitable schedules and misplaced time-off requests. A single nurse lost three to five hours a month creating schedules, and the same person was expected to keep track of each individual provider’s preferences, leaving too much room for error.

Clear Medical Imaging needed an automated solution that would make the schedule creation process faster and easier to manage. After implementing Lightning Bolt, the group experienced significant time savings each month, and provider satisfaction increased notably thanks to fairer schedules and a higher approval rate for time-off requests. By giving providers the ability to indicate scheduling preferences, submit their own time-off requests, and easily swap shifts, Lightning Bolt took a once-frustrating aspect of Clear Medical Imaging’s day-to-day operations and turned it into a major satisfier for the entire group.

The post How To Enhance Provider Satisfaction With Advanced Physician Scheduling Software appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.