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

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Reducing costs and improving hospital productivity remain high on the list of yearly objectives for hospital executives thanks to an ongoing physician shortage, declining operating incomes, lowering reimbursements, and smaller patient volumes.

In 2022, the average cost of labor budgets hovered at more than 50% of hospital expenses.¹ Many hospitals in the US use contract labor (think contract nurses and locum tenens providers) to close gaps caused by consistent staffing shortages.²

From 2019 to 2022, contract labor expenses for hospitals exploded by 258%.³ 

The combination of high labor demands and low supply can lead to increased provider frustration and elevated burnout rates, and it can also strain a hospital’s budget.

One of the underlying themes here is that your scheduling system better be able to keep up with the pace of change. If you’re using an outdated or inefficient system that hands out inequitable schedules when resources are strained, the consequences will be very real.

Health systems need a scheduling solution that builds equitable schedules that account for provider preferences to cut costs and boost hospital productivity as a whole.

Three Ways Optimized Provider Scheduling Improves Hospital Productivity

Hospitals and health systems that optimize provider scheduling can see increased productivity across their organization by way of:

1. Reduced time spent creating increasingly complex clinical schedules
2. Improved provider satisfaction and a decrease in costly clinical turnover
3. A greater understanding of clinician supply and patient demand

Reducing Time Spent Creating Complex Schedules

Many factors contribute to the time it takes to build schedules:

Manually creating clinical schedules based on these factors can take hundreds of hours per year, not to mention the added complexity of scheduling locum positions across multiple locations. 

Simply put, without technology, this is an understandably taxing and risk-heavy endeavor. 

Even so, 45% of US hospitals still create schedules with workflows that involve some combination of spreadsheets, note pads, and fax machines.⁴ Often, this falls on the shoulders of a senior physician, which diverts their time away from direct patient care.

Automating this process reduces the headache of manual scheduling and gives time back to physicians and schedulers. As just one example, PerfectServe Lightning Bolt Scheduling helped UK HealthCare’s hospitalist division rebuild their scheduling process and reduce time spent managing schedules by 82%.

Increase Provider Satisfaction and Decrease Costly Turnover

Poor scheduling practices often leave providers unsatisfied, working inequitable shifts, and lacking a sufficient amount of control over their schedule.

This can easily lead to a decrease in provider satisfaction and a higher likelihood of turnover, which costs health systems an average of $1.2 million per physician.⁵

The growing cost of physician recruitment shows no signs of slowing down. New data projects a shortage of up to 122,000 physicians by 2032.⁶ Hospitals and health systems need to consider how optimized scheduling can create a better practice experience for providers by giving them:

• More schedule transparency
• More clinical time with patients
• The ability to indicate scheduling preferences
• Easy access to their schedule from any location
• The ability to quickly submit shift-swap and time-off requests
• Confidence that their on-call and shift schedules are equitable

As another concrete example, Lightning Bolt helped Clear Medical Imaging automate their process for time-off requests to greatly boost provider satisfaction. Simple administrative processes like these should not be sources of frustration!

Added benefits like those listed above can greatly increase satisfaction and retention, meaning less turnover and increased productivity across departments. Without optimized scheduling, how much money could your organization lose this year to turnover?

Align Clinician Supply with Patient Demand

Improving retention and provider satisfaction are critical to hospital productivity, but having enough providers to cover patient demand is the central piece to providing high-quality, timely patient care.

Because patient demand fluctuates, hospital leaders must have access to insightful, real-time data to make any number of decisions that impact productivity and cost throughout the organization. 

Optimized scheduling software can provide a detailed look at advanced workforce analytics. Using prescriptive analytics, optimized scheduling can assist in aligning clinician supply with patient demand to avoid patient leakage and optimize the use of your most valuable resource—clinical staff. 

With this data, hospitals can analyze gaps in care efficiency to cut waste, boost productivity, and increase patient access. Easily answer difficult operations questions like:

• On which days are the number of clinicians on staff above and below what we need to handle our daily patient appointments?
• How close did we get to meeting patient demand this year compared to last year?
• What is the expected number of appointments seen per provider based on their schedule?

With rules that consider clinician productivity and specializations, optimized scheduling helps healthcare organizations schedule their clinical workforce as efficiently as possible.

How to Enhance Health System Scheduling Practices

Improving hospital productivity is a lofty goal with many elements. Efficient scheduling can help align each element within the hospital system, from provider schedules to meeting patient demands and cutting unnecessary costs.

If you’re ready to automate and optimize your scheduling practices, reach out to us today to learn more, or request a demo to see Lightning Bolt in action.

Sources:

1. Massive Growth in Expenses and Rising Inflation Fuel Continued Financial Challenges for America’s Hospitals and Health Systems, AHA: https://shorturl.at/szBHI
2. 2024 State of Locum Tenens Report, CHG Healthcare: https://shorturl.at/iIRSX
3. Hospitals’ labor costs increased 258% over the last three years, Healthcare Finance: https://shorturl.at/LQUVX
4. Experts: Rethinking Provider Scheduling Alleviates Headaches, Turnover, PhysicianLeaders.org: https://www.physicianleaders.org/articles/experts-rethinking-provider-scheduling-alleviates-headaches-turnover
5. The Real Cost of Vacancies and Provider Turnover, Weatherby Healthcare: https://shorturl.at/ivx26
6. New Findings Confirm Predictions on Physician Shortage, AAMC: https://shorturl.at/vGJLY

The post How Optimized Physician Scheduling Boosts Hospital Productivity appeared first on Lightning Bolt Solutions.

What is Scheduling Season?

When the temperature drops each year and the holiday season starts, many healthcare professionals anticipate the start of cold and flu season. Hospital operations leaders, however, are bracing for a busy season marked by compounding end-of-year physician scheduling demands.

“Scheduling Season”—or the months of September through December each year—causes stress for hospital operations leaders: They face the dual challenge of setting the schedule for the year’s final months while also building the following year’s call schedule.

But how much busier is Scheduling Season? To dig deeper, we evaluated three years of data from 20,506 real physician shift schedules created in PerfectServe Lightning Bolt Scheduling’s platform.

We found that the average number of schedules and the average length of schedules created from September through December across the three-year timespan increased above the combined yearly average.

Let’s examine the key findings to explore the heightened workload that Lightning Bolt’s scheduling users face. We’ll also look at the intense stress levels schedulers without the support of advanced technology face during Scheduling Season.

Combating Frequent Schedule Changes

Fact: The number of schedules created during Scheduling Season is 34.58% above average.

The first stressor apparent in the data is a rise in the number of schedules created during the months of Scheduling Season—an increase of 34.58% when compared to the yearly average. The data also showed that the average number of days between the date a schedule is generated and its start date is 55, which means schedulers are building schedules, on average, nearly two months in advance.

As a result, schedulers face dual tasks during Scheduling Season: (1) setting the schedule for the final months of the current year and (2) building the following year’s call schedule. The holiday season further complicates the intensity of schedule changes during this time of year. This can be a point of contention for providers, adding another level of complexity and stress when building the schedule.

Fact: The length of schedules created during Scheduling Season is 23.01% above average.

The scheduling data also revealed that the length of schedules created during Scheduling Season is 23.01% above the yearly average. In physician shift scheduling, the length of a schedule is one of three significant variables—alongside the number of assignments and providers—that have a direct impact on the number of possible schedule combinations.

For example, the number of possible schedule combinations for two providers and one assignment across two days is 16. However, if the number of days is increased to 30 while the other variables remain the same, the number of possible schedule combinations increases to more than one quintillion. It’s no surprise why hospital operations leaders feel like they’re trying to complete an impossible task during Scheduling Season when the length of the schedules they’re creating equals more complexity and, therefore, more time spent scheduling.

Scheduling Season is Here

Who’s bearing the brunt of this Scheduling Season within your organization: an optimized scheduling solution or an overwhelmed scheduler on the brink of burnout? To learn more about making this the least stressful Scheduling Season yet, contact Lightning Bolt’s scheduling experts to schedule a consultation.

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“Although caregivers are burdened with reporting reams of information, they rarely consistently track the health outcomes that matter most to patients and thus to themselves as clinicians.”¹

With rising labor costs,² growing expenses, falling EBITDA, and decreasing operating margins,³ healthcare organizations need new strategies for controlling costs and improving clinical communication workflows. While analytics are often used to inform strategic decision making such as supply chain management, healthcare organizations may miss the opportunity to use analytics to maximize their most important resource: their clinical workforce.

Let’s explore how an advanced provider scheduling solution can deliver analytics that play an essential role in improving healthcare operations.

1: Reduce Wasted Resources

Advanced scheduling analytics allow your organization to identify trends in patient demand. Assess service utilization across departments and clinic locations to adjust staffing levels over time. You can analyze demand for specific services, determine the number of clinicians needed to deliver those services for a given timeframe, and reduce staff and labor costs when patient demand is lower. For example:

The Chief of Surgery wants to better understand seasonal trends in patient demand for elective surgeries. He runs a report and finds that case numbers are much lower during January and February. With granular insights into provider supply and patient demand, he is able to project exactly how many surgeons are needed during each shift. He asks the department scheduler to reduce staffing levels for January and February.

2: Ensure Patient Access

After using analytics to identify trends in patient demand, you can respond to rising demand by proactively increasing staff levels to improve patient access and increase revenue. For example:

The Emergency Department’s Medical Director runs a report and finds that during the summer months, the need for pediatric emergency care greatly increases. Currently, the team only staffs a single pediatric emergency physician. The Medical Director contacts the department scheduler and requests for a pediatric advanced practice provider to be added to the schedule for June through August.

In the example above, the ED (Emergency Department) has both increased patient access to pediatric emergency care and increased clinical capacity—helping the department generate more revenue based on a particularly common type of service for the specific timeframe. With trends in value-based care, this pediatric practice can improve patient satisfaction.

3. Improve Provider Retention

A key approach to cost reduction is to improve provider retention. Replacing a single physician can cost anywhere from $500,000 up to $1 million, according to the American Medical Association (AMA).⁴ This means focusing on provider satisfaction and retention could save your organization hundreds of thousands—and maybe even millions—of dollars.

According to the 2020 Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report, spending too many hours at work is a key contributor to provider burnout.⁵ But what is the definition of “too many hours” and how can you help prevent provider schedules from reaching that threshold?

Scheduling analytics help ensure certain shifts, like weekends and calls, are evenly distributed across a team of providers. You can share reports with your team that show even shift distribution. This eliminates any possible suspicion of unfairness, which may not completely eliminate the issue of spending too many hours at work, but it helps address a source of provider dissatisfaction.

4. Optimize Staffing Models

Not all providers and care team members are alike. Some prefer to work more than others, some practice part-time, and they each vary in their preferences and productivity levels, making it challenging to optimize staffing models by specialization and availability alone. Advanced medical analytics reporting provides the details you need to enhance your organization’s staffing models for productivity.

Over time, you can note which providers are more productive during specific shift times to create rules that schedule individual providers for their most productive shifts. You can then review the larger impact of certain staffing models on productivity and adjust your scheduling rules on a macro level. Without scheduling analytics, this type of insight and optimization is nearly impossible to achieve. But with the evolving demands and expectations in healthcare, it’s also becoming essential every day.

Reduce Poor Workflows and Improve Patient Response Times

Interested in improving operations, reducing labor costs, and increasing patient and provider satisfaction with better clinical scheduling? Learn more about the clinical workforce analytics available in our Lightning Bolt Scheduling solution and how they can enhance your organizational operations.

Resources

1. Tiesberg T, Wallace S, O’Hara S. Defining and Implementing Value-Based Health Care: A Strategic Framework. Academic Med. 2020 May; 95(5):682-685. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000003122
2. Labor Management Trends, Healthcare Financial Management Association, Navigant, Aug. 2018: guidehouse.com/-/media/www/site/insights/healthcare/2018/navigant-hfma-2018-labor-pulse-survey.pdf
3. Hospital profitability withers in November as volumes, revenues lag, Becker’s Healthcare, Morgan Haefner, Becker’s Healthcare Review, Jan. 2, 2020: beckershospitalreview.com/finance/hospital-profitability-withers-in-november-as-volume-revenues-lag.html
4. At Stanford, physician burnout costs at least $7.75 million a year, American Medical Association, Sara Berg, American Medical Association, Nov. 17, 2017: ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/stanfordphysician-burnout-costs-least-775-million-year
5. Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report 2020: The Generational Divide, Medscape, January 15, 2020: medscape.com/slideshow/2020-lifestyle-burnout-6012460 – 5

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Radiology scheduling is highly complex, with teams scheduling providers across numerous specialties and locations. As a result, building the schedule is a task often reserved for physicians or administrators with deep knowledge of how their teams operate. Though this process is standard for many practices and healthcare organizations today, it often presents its own set of problems.

Why Is Radiology Scheduling So Difficult?

Creating shift schedules for radiologists is a major balancing act, with multiple scheduling variables that often compete against one another. Without leveraging the right tools to build schedules, radiology groups get stuck with a time-consuming, inefficient process that typically requires hours to create, edit, and distribute schedules. Let’s explore some key issues that contribute to the complexity of radiology scheduling.

1. Subspecialty coverage for diagnostic imaging exams.

Many diagnostic imaging exams and interventional procedures require specific subspecialty coverage. Radiologists are typically credentialed to work only one particular sub-specialty, with few able to provide cross-coverage care. The increasing sub-specialization of radiology, coupled with the growing shortage of radiologists,¹ makes this all the more challenging.

2. Scheduling radiologists and technologists across multiple locations.

Ensuring all shift types are covered without overutilizing certain providers is increasingly difficult. The consolidation of radiology practices and healthcare systems has forced many radiology groups to adjust their staffing models, which impacts imaging volume, hiring capabilities, workplace efficiency, patient care, and physician well-being.²

Radiologists and radiology technologists typically cover multiple locations, from imaging centers to hospitals. This makes the accuracy of existing manual schedules questionable, as it’s hard to determine who’s scheduled for what location and at what time. Add in the varying shift types at each individual location, and the equation becomes even more challenging. And because radiologists are a key component of the success of value-based care, it’s essential to staff locations accordingly.³

3. Physician preferences and satisfaction are a top priority.

Radiology is quickly becoming one of the most challenging and expensive specialties for physician recruitment.⁴ The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates a shortfall of nearly 42,000 radiologists by 2033.⁶ As a result, it’s incredibly important to create schedules that minimize burnout and keep providers happy.

That means schedulers need to create schedules that factor in individual physician preferences, allow adequate time between long or taxing shifts, and ensure shifts are evenly distributed among providers. However, given the large number of scheduling variables, some radiology groups struggle to make provider satisfaction and well-being a priority when building schedules.

4. Team productivity can vary among providers.

Like most industries, each team (and each provider) works at different speeds to manage patient care and administrative duties. Some radiologists can read 11 films in an hour, while others can only read eight. A scheduler must know in advance to account for various productivity levels, much like they must account for different provider preferences. If they don’t know about varying productivity levels in advance, they may have to go back and make further edits to the schedule, increasing the time spent on this already cumbersome task.

How to Optimize Radiology Scheduling Using Automation

Despite the existing complexities associated with radiology scheduling, some radiology groups still build shift schedules manually—by hand or spreadsheet—instead of using automated radiology scheduling software.⁵ Unfortunately, manual scheduling often leaves gaps in coverage, requires cumbersome manual edits, and fails to maximize existing physician and administrative resources. The downstream consequences of a suboptimal schedule can contribute to physician burnout, whether because shifts aren’t distributed equally or because oversights lead to frustrating operational hiccups. Schedules built manually also tend to be written by hand or typed into a computer, meaning a scheduler has to individually send the schedule—and any edits thereafter—to each person who needs to see it.

In contrast, optimized radiology scheduling software is much more efficient and cost-effective. It grants physicians more autonomy over their work preferences, flexibly schedules providers across various locations, maximizes resources, and saves physicians and administrative staff hours of their time by automating the schedule-building process. Plus, with an automated schedule builder, any edits made after the fact can be updated in real time, and providers accessing the schedule will be notified of all relevant changes when they occur. These schedules are also accessible on desktop and mobile apps, meaning no provider is left behind when the schedule is published.

Real-World Impacts of Manual Scheduling Issues

Greenville, North Carolina-based Eastern Radiologists, LLC, was unsatisfied with their manual schedule-building process. The subspecialty radiology practice supports 18 locations, including six imaging centers and 12 hospitals, and manages a total of 61 provider schedules. To build these complex schedules, they relied on an Excel spreadsheet. It was an imperfect process, to say the least. 

Eastern Radiologists had to build schedules that accounted for various organizational requirements, coverage for all specialties, fluctuating patient demand, and provider preferences. In particular, they struggled to schedule a balanced number of “slow readers” (providers who are newer or tend to work slower than others) and faster readers. They faced other problems as well: 

• Provider confusion based on incorrect schedules 
• Some providers believed favoritism crept into the scheduling process
• Manual checks and edits were commonly needed
• There was no single source of truth for the schedule
• Manual Excel sheet formulas were often disrupted on accident
• Confusion about regional sites (what provider would be at which location) was common
• Multiple schedule versions were often being distributed, referenced, and accessed simultaneously

After switching to PerfectServe’s Lightning Bolt Scheduling, Eastern Radiologists implemented 385 unique schedule rules as part of a new automated scheduling process. This included, for example, a rule that only one slower reader could be scheduled at each location per shift. The automated process can also easily handle time-off requests, equitable shift distribution, and individual provider schedule preferences, such as preferred work days or the maximum number of consecutive shifts they’d like to work. This leads to schedules that better balance the needs of the organization with the needs (and wants) of providers.

Additionally, Eastern Radiologists are now able to download and analyze shift data to ensure equal distribution of work among all of their providers, including the ability to see who swapped shifts, who picked up shifts, and who may have dropped shifts or taken vacation time. Lightning Bolt is able to generate this and many other reports to improve resource allocation and ensure workload equity. All of their implemented rules are now automatically considered to create the best possible schedule that meets organizational needs, accounts for provider preferences, and maximizes resources. You can watch an on-demand webinar featuring their Lightning Bolt experience here.

Interested in learning more about optimized schedules? Contact us today to learn how you can ditch the manual work in favor of Lightning Bolt’s automated scheduling solution.

Sources

^1,6 Physician Specialty Shortage – Including Radiologists – Continues to Climb, Diagnostic Imaging, Whitney J. Palmer: diagnosticimaging.com/view/physician-specialty-shortage-including-radiologists-continues-to-climb

² Around-the-Clock Radiology Coverage: Challenges and Opportunities, Applied Radiology: https://appliedradiology.com/Articles/around-the-clock-radiology-coverage-challenges-and-opportunities

³ Radiology in the era of value-based healthcare: a multi-society expert statement from the ACR, CAR, ESR, IS3R, RANZCR, and RSNA, Insights Imaging: https://insightsimaging.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13244-020-00941-z

⁴ Physician Recruitment: The Cost to Hire and Return on Investment, Jackson Physician Search: jacksonphysiciansearch.com/physician-recruitment-the-cost-to-hire-and-return-on-investment/

⁵ In the Flow: Part 2 — Equitable Scheduling Prevents Burnout, Delivers Better Patient Care, Radiology Today—Vol. 19 (No. 3), Page 24, 2018: radiologytoday.net/archive/rt0318p24.shtml

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