Having a single cohesive system for physician scheduling is a major benefit to healthcare organizations. It makes creating and managing schedules much easier and promotes healthy work-life balances for clinical staff. However, staff may still be loyal to a legacy system, so it’s important to be able to convince them that a new system is worth acquiring and learning to use. Here are some ways to get physicians to buy into a new scheduling software.
Open Communication
One of the first steps to take to get physicians on board with a new scheduling system is to talk to them directly about it. Bring them in on the decision so that your healthcare organization’s leadership team isn’t making a decision without their input. Go to your clinical staff and get their ideas and opinions. Find out what they want to see in a new scheduling system. Find out what works and doesn’t work about the legacy system and see if there’s a way to adapt the good things and fix the bad things for the new system. Do your best to meet the needs of your team of physicians, since it’s their time and resources that this system will regulate. Show them multiple options and give them the opportunity to try them out in a demo, if possible. And when a decision has been made about what new system to adopt, assure your team that comprehensive training will be available to help them learn to use it.
Custom Building
The one-size-fits-all scheduling system won’t necessarily work for your staff. Each healthcare organization has different needs, so your system should be catered to meet the needs of your team. Out-of-the-box software may have tools that your staff will never use, and may be lacking tools that they desperately need. The best way to solve this problem is to find a solution that can be custom built to suit your organization. Some basic customization needs include:
- Cohesiveness and ability to see all necessary information synced in one place
- Time-saving features such as easy menus and intuitive time tracking tools
- Easy-to-use dashboard for displaying and storing all schedule information
- Ease of access for Human Resources departments
- Rules-based scheduling that eliminates loopholes and potential scheduling errors
Physicians will also want to use this scheduling system to keep track of finer details, like billable vs. non-billable work, analytics of time management and efficiency, appointment times and shift switching. And in the midst of all of that, they’ll want it to save them time. So your new scheduling system should be built in such a way that it can handle both broad, big-picture tasks and smaller, details-focused tasks with ease and synchronicity.
Training and Support
Physicians and other clinical staff will be most comfortable with a new scheduling system if they are given the opportunity to learn how to use it. With technology advancing at rapid speeds, they’ll likely be able to access it from practically any electronic device, so you’ll want to make sure they have time to grow accustomed to it. Additionally, as you continue to use this software, it will likely evolve and update according to new ideas and your organization’s continuing needs. Physicians will need to be kept in the loop about changes to the system and will need to learn to use these changes. Furthermore, since scheduling software is an electronic medium, they will want the assurance that it’s not going to suddenly stop working and limit their access to their time management tool. They’ll rest easy knowing that it’s fully supported behind the scenes.
The Qgenda Difference
Qgenda’s software can be catered to meet your organization’s needs. It’s an advanced system that includes various technical, but intuitive, controls that can be used to build out schedules, manage time, create reports and keep track of staff movement and availability. It’s a top choice of healthcare organizations for creating and managing physician scheduling, so there’s a way that it can work for you and your team. They offer demos to help you decide if the Qgenda solution is right for you, and provide a high level of technical support to ensure continued satisfaction with your system. Contact Qgenda today for more information!
