Join us at AONE 2013!
The theme is “Reaching New Heights, Transforming Nursing Leadership.”
The Cerner Clairvia team is excited to see many of our clients and colleagues at the upcoming American Organization of Nursing Executives (AONE) annual meeting in Denver, March 20-22, 2013. We will be sharing stories of client successes and introducing our Health System Command Center in exhibit hall. The Command Center is a new management system designed for total hospital efficiency where patient flow, staffing and care coordination are operating at equilibrium. In addition to workforce innovations, we will be showcasing Cerner solutions that provide nursing workflows for best practices.
Outside the exhibit hall, Cerner Clairvia is pleased to sponsor the AONE Michael Warner educational grant for research in staffing. As a Clairvia founder and previous partner of Cerner Clairvia General Manager Beth Pickard, Dr. Warner has made significant contributions to the industry. Other highlights in the week include an education session by Cerner VP of Nursing Roy Simpson, entitled “State of Contemporary Informatics Competencies for Chief Nurse Executives.” In addition, Cerner Clairvia Client Barbara Caspers, VP of Nursing Operations and Acute Care Practice at Catholic Health Initiatives, will be receiving an award on behalf of her efforts at Catholic Health Initiatives.
Additional information on the event can be found at http://www.aone.org/conference2013/index.shtml.
Look for us in booth #1318; we look forward to seeing you there!
Register Now for the February 15 Webinar
Click here to register now or visit our Webinars page for more information.
Save the Date: Webinar on February 15
Details on times and how to RSVP are coming soon!
Physician Scheduler: The Single Trusted Source for Physician Coordination
February 15
Theo Green, Physician Scheduler Consulting
Corey Fleitz, Physician Scheduler Sales Executive
The top priority for hospital organizations is to eliminate waste and inefficient care processes through improved communication and care coordination. Participants will identify how the Physician Scheduler solution’s call schedule generation, search capabilities, and mobile technology provide a platform for care team communication across the acute care continuum.
Coordination of care requires quick, accurate alignment of patients, nurses, and physicians
Healthcare organizations know that improving coordination of care is vital to our future success. Accomplishing this objective requires us to align patient needs with the skills, abilities, and availability of nursing staff and treating physicians—in real time. Today, hospitals track patient needs through a variety of systems, including ADT, EHR, and even RTLS. Nursing resources are typically automated via the staffing system. Physician schedules and availability, however, can be much more difficult to ascertain. At moments when we can have a significant, positive impact on the quality and cost of care, there simply is no single, trusted source for this critical element of care coordination.
It’s 2:30 AM. A heart attack victim is being rushed to the ER. Who’s the cardiologist on call? At 10:00 that same morning, a knee replacement patient waits to be discharged. Where’s the physician who can process her release? Later in the day, an oncology patient’s son arrives, after a long drive, to visit his mother. He wants to know when the physician will be making rounds. He’s in no mood to wait for an answer.
Every day, in hospitals everywhere, matters of life and death, patient and family satisfaction, as well as operational efficiency and organizational effectiveness, hang on one question: Where’s the right physician? And while caregivers and support staff use their best efforts to answer this question via manual or non-integrated systems, critical moments slip by. Patient outcomes are adversely affected, family members’ anxieties become frustrations, and the cost of care increases. Considering the financial impact alone, the Journal of Healthcare Management estimated that this one inefficiency costs U.S. hospitals $12 billion per year.
For years, we’ve been providing physician specialties with robust, reliable scheduling solutions. Now, we’re putting that experience to work for hospitals, integrating physicians’ schedules with those of everyone else on the care team, so caregivers and support staff always know where the right physician is, right now. Fully integrated with the EMR system and enhanced by advanced features such as easy-to-use schedule swapping and automatic paging, Physician Scheduler can help your organization improve the coordination of care—and make the most of every minute when every minute matters most.
Unprecedented Opportunity to Positively Impact the Patient Experience.
Now that many hospitals are adding more physicians to their internal staff, we have an unprecedented opportunity to positively impact the patient experience. Healthcare organizations now have the opportunity to know where the right doctor is for a patient- all the time- in real time. To capture this opportunity, though, you have to be able to integrate the physicians’ schedules with your other decision support systems. Clairvia Physician Scheduler gives you this ability by starting with the highly complex on-call schedules specifically built to accommodate all physician specialties. A single repository for all the complex department physician schedule information in one, automated, integrated, easy-to-access location. You always know where your doctors are, and can quickly find an on-call physician in any specialty, at any time.
We can’t make delivering high quality health care simple, but we can make it easier to manage the complexities. By integrating the functions that have the greatest impact on patient outcomes, we give you the tools to communicate effectively, coordinate resources quickly and accurately, and lower the cost of getting every patient what he or she needs, right now.
Finally, a solution to improve system-wide, care coordination and physician communication
The delivery of quality healthcare requires that you maintain quality relationships and provide an integrated way to communicate with your physicians and caregivers.
An essential first step in ensuring effective communication with physicians begins with a clear understanding of—and control over—physicians’ often very complex schedules.
Clairvia’s Physician Scheduler software is the solution that will provide you with the flexibility to provide a variety of scheduling solutions to all types of physician specialties and staff.
You will eliminate inefficiencies and costs of disparate, fragmented systems and provide a tool that will encourage enhanced communication and the coordination of care between physicians, caregivers, and your patients.
Capitol Anesthesiology Association uses Physician Scheduler to automate scheduling rules, ensure balanced workload, and deliver Web-based schedule access and mobile connectivity
In overseeing the scheduling of 84 anesthesiologists and more than 100 support staff performing greater than 90,000 procedures per year at 24 different healthcare settings, Cheryl McClure of Capitol Anesthesiology Associates (CAA) in Austin, Texas knows that hearing no news is good news.
“It means that our automated scheduling software is doing its job,” says McClure, who also serves as CAA’s payroll administrator. “We’ve been using the Physician Scheduler® solution for over 10 years now—since the late 1990s—and I would have heard about it long before now if the software wasn’t meeting the needs of our healthcare providers and our practice as a whole.”
As one of the largest anesthesia groups in the Southwest, CAA demands an automated physician scheduling solution that can handle intricate, multi-site scheduling rules and scenarios, ensure accurate, equitable schedules for its physicians and clinical staff, and provide Web-based schedule access and mobile device connectivity.
Time tested since 1993, Physician Scheduler delivers the flexibility, reliability and advanced features specialty physician groups need to meet patient care coverage requirements in highly dynamic and competitive healthcare environments.
“We’ve been very pleased with Physician Scheduler,” says Ed Myslik, CAA’s finance director. “As a large practice, we maintain an active role in the anesthesiology community at the national level. When we hear of another practice considering an automated physician scheduling solution, we have no hesitation recommending Physician Scheduler.”
Powerful automation to accommodate complex rules and patient coverage requirements
At the heart of Physician Scheduler is a powerful scheduling engine that incorporates all user-specified rules and applies them automatically.
Given the complexity of many physician scheduling rules—which are often based upon and established through a multi-faceted series of triggering relationships among assignments, call schedules, and other factors—gaining automated control over rules-based requirements delivers vital efficiency.
“I’ve been handling physician scheduling here since October of 2001, and the system has definitely improved our overall efficiency and accuracy in generating schedules,” says Andrew Grimes, M.D., staff anesthesiologist at CAA. “Before, it took me about 40 to 45 hours to develop a 10-week schedule on paper, and it was very tedious. Now, it takes about half the time, and the system’s rules-based automation prevents errors, incompatibilities and conflicts.”
Physician Scheduler relies on a sophisticated “links-and-blocks” rules framework to ensure that all the various scheduling associations and contingencies are precisely and reliably addressed and enforced.
“The power and flexibility of the rules engine are essential to us because we have such complicated rules here,” states Dr. Grimes. “I haven’t run across a scheduling scenario that I haven’t been able to automate with the system.”
The high degree of precision attained through Physician Scheduler also has permitted Dr. Grimes to devote more of his time to patient care.
“Because the process is much more efficient, it does save some M.D. hours. For instance, I used to take time out of the OR on a Monday and Tuesday to do the scheduling, and now I spend those days in the OR. Those are also dollars we’re getting back because of our use of the system.”
Myslik concurs, saying: “Physician Scheduler’s automation frees our physicians and staff from the hassles of inefficient paper schedules, and enables them to better focus their time and energies on clinical matters.”
Physicians and staff are assured of receiving fair and equitable schedules
In addition to improving efficiency, Physician Scheduler equalizes physician assignments and workload, and provides reports that deliver proof of schedule and shift equitability.
Prior to the implementation of Physician Scheduler, when schedules were developed on paper, “we didn’t have any real handle on how well we were distributing shifts evenly among the physician staff, and no way to prove how well we were doing this,” says Dr. Grimes. “Now, through all the reports I can run, I have a complete, birds-eye view on everything that’s going on, making sure that all assignments and call, both the most desirable and the least desirable—such as weekend call—are distributed evenly.”
The consistent, accurate application of scheduling rules and the supportive reporting provide assurance that schedules are going to be fair to all staff members.
“The system has alleviated any fears that might have existed that individual needs might not be met,” Dr. Grimes emphasizes. “The system really does address individual needs, and that has enabled all of us to trust the scheduling process more.”
The scalability and flexibility to incorporate CRNAs
Since it is powered by an enterprise scheduling engine, Physician Scheduler is the ideal fit for large physician practices and hospital specialty departments that schedule both physicians and other staff members across multiple facilities.
CAA has expanded the scope of Physician Scheduler to schedule its staff of more than 100 certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), ensuring comprehensive control over staff scheduling and management.
In addition, the group is taking advantage of the software’s enterprise design and open architecture to automate information sharing. Integrating Physician Scheduler with its Kronos time-and-attendance system allows CAA to eliminate a significant amount of redundant data entry, and gain a complete scheduling and labor management solution.
The convenience of Web-based schedule access and mobile device connectivity
Given their busy, on-the-go daily routines and demands, today’s physicians want greater and more convenient access to scheduling information and decision-support tools.
Physician Scheduler’s Web-based interface enables CAA’s anesthesiologists and staff to view their schedules anytime of the day and night.
“Because of the complexity and the changing nature of physician scheduling, and all the locations and shifts we have to cover, the physicians really appreciate having constant, convenient access to their own, highlighted schedules,” says Dr. Grimes. “It’s another way we’re improving awareness and preventing any missed shifts.”
In addition, the latest release of Physician Scheduler offers a new, automatic email notification feature that CAA is now utilizing. Any time a new schedule is published or a task is updated, the software transmits an email and schedule revision attachment to the affected physicians and staff. Emails are imported into the providers’ Microsoft® Outlook calendars, which can be linked to smart phones and other mobile devices.
“There’s no doubt that our physicians and staff value having easy, quick access to their schedules over the Web, and receiving schedule changes on their handhelds,” says McClure. “These are important tools that improve intra-practice communication and physician satisfaction.”
McClure reports that CAA is considering introducing other new, Web-based features of Physician Scheduler, such as Shift Opportunities and Shift Swap. Shift Opportunities gives caregivers equal opportunity to sign up for open assignments. With Shift Swap, physicians and staff can exchange shifts with their colleagues.
“We’re taking a measured, deliberate approach to rolling out new functionality because we want our physicians and staff to be fully familiar with and adept users of what we’ve implemented to date,” Myslik says. “While we haven’t yet tapped into all of the product’s capabilities, we will be exploring additional ways it can benefit our practice and patients, and improve satisfaction among our physicians and staff.”
About Capitol Anesthesiology Association
Capitol Anesthesiology Association, located in Austin, Texas, is a large, team-model anesthesiology practice. CAA’s physicians specialize in the field of anesthesiology, and offer additional, sub-specialty expertise in the areas of obstetrics, pediatrics, intensive care, cardiovascular surgery and pain therapy.
The association delivers services at many Austin area facilities, including the Seton Family of Hospitals, Austin Surgical Hospital, Hill Country Surgery Center, Meridian Plastic Surgery Center, and Texas Orthopedics Sports and Rehabilitation, among others.
About Physician Scheduler®
For more than 10 years, thousands of physicians across the country have relied on Physician Scheduler to automate the demanding, time-intensive task of creating an equitable schedule based on the complex rules of individual physician groups, while ensuring an equitable share of call and adequate coverage.
Physician Scheduler delivers:
- Rules-based automated scheduling according to each practice’s specifications
- Real-time decision-support tools to address last-minute changes
- Schedule access from anywhere over the Web
- Coverage optimization across multiple sites
- Complete enterprise-wide capability
Physician Scheduler is developed and marketed by Clairvia, which serves more than 1,200 healthcare organizations, medical facilities, nursing departments, and group practices with advanced software solutions for patient and staff management.
For more information on Physician Scheduler, visit www.physicianscheduler.com. For more information on the complete range of healthcare software solutions from Clairvia, go to www.clairvia.com.
The Heart Center uses Physician Scheduler to manage cardiology scheduling and expand practice
When you ask Jan Reynolds, Chief Operating Officer at the Heart Center in Huntsville, Alabama, how her cardiology practice would handle physician scheduling without Physician Scheduler® software, the reply is swift and direct.
“It’d be impossible,” she states, simply.
Each day, Reynolds relies on Physician Scheduler to ensure accurate scheduling and appointment coverage for its 30 cardiologists and 12 nurse practitioners—all of whom rotate among The Heart Center’s four main practice locations throughout the Tennessee Valley.
“With so many moving parts related to scheduling for our cardiology practice—whether it’s assigning staffing to multiple daily tasks based on specific compatibilities or changing task shifts and assignments at numerous locations on the fly—I couldn’t imagine how we would manage without Physician Scheduler,” she says.
The flexibility to handle complex scheduling rules and accommodate practice expansion
Reynolds points to the software’s flexible, scalable scheduling engine as why Physician Scheduler can accommodate the most intricate cardiology scheduling rules and meet the highly complex scheduling demands of a rapidly growing, multi-site practice environment.
“We started using Physician Scheduler software in 1998, and since that time, we’ve tripled our number of practice physicians, added nurse practitioners, and introduced a multitude of new task shifts and assignments to serve our new satellite office locations,” Reynolds says. “The software has easily adapted to our growth. Its flexibility is the key. It can handle any number and type of new rules, and do it quickly, accurately, and reliably.”
Because Physician Scheduler can adapt to how each specialty group schedules and can incorporate an unlimited number of assignments linked to an infinite number of rules and subsets of rules, it allows users to optimize and gain maximum benefit of the software’s automation.
Reynolds cited several examples of how The Heart Center relies on Physician Scheduler to synchronize complicated cardiology scheduling requirements.
“It’s essential that I be able to set up certain tasks that can be linked with other tasks,” she says. “For instance, morning clinic assignments need to be linked to afternoon hospital assignments, and night call has to be linked with the next day off.
“In addition, as tasks are set up, each task has certain ‘same-day’ compatibilities to ensure that I don’t assign two conflicting tasks on the same day. I also can set up blocks between assignments on various days so that if a physician is on call one evening, he or she won’t be put on call again within a designated time period. I can also set limits to the number of times any assignment can be scheduled within certain time periods.”
Backed by its proven conflict-checking capabilities, Physician Scheduler delivers The Heart Center with the assurance and peace of mind that the right, qualified physician will always be on hand to provide the right type of cardiology care.
“The software supports the quality patient care because physicians are assigned only to the appropriate shifts for which they qualify,” Reynolds explains. “If I try to schedule a physician in a task for which he or she is not credentialed, the system will alert me to the issue.”
The capability to equalize call schedules and the reporting to prove it
By ensuring fair, equitable cardiology scheduling, physicians and nurses at The Heart Center know that their individual needs and schedule expectations will be addressed along with the requirements of the practice and patients.
While optimizing coverage at its multiple locations based on the unique skill sets of cardiologists, Physician Scheduler ensures an equitable rotation and balanced workload. Reports are available to demonstrate schedule fairness and to justify all staffing decisions.
“I run statistical reports in the software to show that assignments are balanced, whether it’s equalizing the night call, assignments to the cath lab or weekend call,” Reynolds says. “Monthly reports are generated to track all time, from clinic days to meeting days, per physician to ensure that schedules are fair to everyone.”
Solving the challenge of scheduling follow-up appointments a year in advance
Because Physician Scheduler adapts and configures to the way each specialty group schedules, The Heart Center leverages the software to address certain specialized requirements. An example is found in how the practice schedules patients’ return cardiology appointments.
“Scheduling follow-up appointments has always been a challenge because it’s difficult knowing an appropriate physician’s availability months into the future,” Reynolds says. “We only release our schedules one month in advance, and previously we were unable to schedule return appointments for patients until the schedules were released.
“About two years ago, we recognized that we could establish 12-month patterns within Physician Scheduler to assign each physician to a certain clinic each week or every other week. By doing this in the software, we’re able to accurately schedule patients’ follow-up appointments up to a year into the future.”
About The Heart Center
Founded in 1979, The Heart Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is one of the nation’s largest private cardiac and vascular facilities, with 30 board certified cardiovascular specialist and over 200 highly trained support staff.
In 2009, The Heart Center joined Huntsville Hospital, bringing together the region’s premier cardiac hospital with the largest cardiology practice in North Alabama.
The Heart Center’s primary, state-of-the-art facility encompasses more than 90,000 square feet, offers a full spectrum of patient focused, centrally managed cardiovascular care, and sets the benchmark with its diagnostic testing and in-house catheterization lab. The practice, with offices in Huntsville, Sheffield, Fayetteville and Decatur, offers comprehensive prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the heart and blood vessels throughout the Tennessee Valley.
For more information, visit www.theheartcenter.md.
About Physician Scheduler®
For more than 10 years, thousands of physicians across the country have relied on Physician Scheduler to automate the demanding, time-intensive task of creating an equitable schedule based on the complex rules of individual physician groups, while ensuring an equitable share of call and adequate coverage.
Physician Scheduler delivers:
- Rules-based automated scheduling according to each practice’s specifications
- Real-time decision-support tools to address last-minute changes
- Schedule access from anywhere over the Web
- Coverage optimization across multiple sites
- Complete enterprise-wide capability
Physician Scheduler is developed and marketed by Clairvia, which serves more than 1,200 healthcare organizations, medical facilities, nursing departments, and group practices with advanced software solutions for patient and staff management.
For more information on the complete range of healthcare software solutions from Clairvia, go to www.clairvia.com.
Clairvia Introduces Physician Scheduler Innovation and Leadership Awards
At its recent user conference in Orlando, Clairvia introduced a new Physician Scheduler® customer award program to recognize outstanding physician group and hospital-based specialty department achievements in two areas: innovation and leadership.
During the inaugural 2010 Physician Scheduler Innovation and Leadership Awards ceremony held August 19th, Clairvia presented Pediatric Associates of Fort Lauderdale with this year’s Innovation Award, and presented Dr. Kevin L. Wethington of the Utah Department of Anesthesiology in Salt Lake City with the this year’s Leadership Award.
“Clairvia is very excited to unveil our new awards program because they give us the opportunity to formally showcase how our customers are extending the boundaries of healthcare innovation and leadership,” says Beth Pickard, Clairvia president and CEO.
“By showcasing these premier organizations and highlighting their exceptional results, we’re able to share remarkable success stories with our customers, partners, employees and the healthcare industry.”
The Physician Scheduler Innovation Awards are awarded to the specialty group or hospital-based specialty department that demonstrates exceptional use of Physician Scheduler in enterprise scheduling and in applying feature enhancements.
Pediatric Associates — the largest, privately held pediatric practice in the U.S. by patient volume — implemented Physician Scheduler to gain centralized, automated control over its enterprise-wide scheduling environment, and deliver real-time schedule access and automated change notifications via email to its more than 130 pediatricians and 350 clinical staff.
The practice recognized its manual, paper-based scheduling processes were inefficient, labor intensive and unable to ensure up-to-date, practice-wide communication, and meet increasingly complex patient coverage needs at its medical offices throughout four counties in South Florida.
Pediatric Associates has played an important role in the development of Physician Scheduler by utilizing Clairvia’s Request for Enhancement Program, which encourages customers to formally submit desired product enhancements. By actively participating in the program, Pediatric Associates has gained new and improved software functionality while helping to ensure that Physician Scheduler meets the ongoing needs of other current customers as well as future customers.
“For Pediatric Associates, innovation requires a willingness to think about what we might do instead of focusing on merely what we can do,” remarked Doreen Levin, Pediatric Associates’ chief information officer. “We are proud to receive this award and are excited to continue a strong working relationship with our technology partners at Clairvia.”
Read the Pediatric Associates success story at www.physicianscheduler.com
The Physician Scheduler Leadership Awards are presented to the specialty group or hospital-based specialty department physician who exhibits outstanding leadership qualities in leveraging Physician Scheduler to automate scheduling and staffing.
Dr. Wethington, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of the Utah Department of Anesthesiology, was recognized with the Leadership Award for his commitment to continually explore new ways the department could benefit from and take advantage of Physician Scheduler technology.
Since the department implemented the software in 2002, Dr. Wethington has led efforts to expand the use of Physician Scheduler to schedule residents and CRNAs, participate in customer focus groups, and customize the software to better meet the precise goals and objectives within his department.
Currently, the Utah Department of Anesthesia relies on Physician Scheduler to schedule its 56 faculty anesthesiologists, 39 residents, and seven CRNAs. The department provides anesthetic services and pain management for over 20,000 patients each year at the University of Utah Hospital, the University of Utah Orthopedic Center, the Moran Eye Center, the Huntsman Cancer Hospital, and the Salt Lake Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
“These success stories are remarkable examples of how our Physician Scheduler customers are using our software to improve their performance and results in a highly competitive and demanding healthcare environment,” says Phillip Madden, Clairvia’s vice president of Client Services at Clairvia. “Many of our customers were actively involved in planning and leading conference sessions, and I want to express my sincere thanks to them and to all of our customers who joined us in Orlando.”
Today’s Mobile Technology
At Your Service
Texting, as well as email-and Internet-enabled smartphones, have changed the way we communicate. Now, they can change the way you manage your scheduling needs, helping you cut waste and provide your team with up-to-date information anytime, anywhere. Three new, advanced mobile technology offerings add on-the-go functionality to the hospital enterprise and physician marketplace:
- ShiftAlert Mobile delivers mobile alerts to physicians and hospital employees on open shifts that have come available, and need to be filled now. Caregivers simply respond to text-alerts to sign up for open shifts and receive real-time confirmation of their new assignment–saving staffing managers the time-consuming hassles of making multiple phone calls.
- Physician Scheduler MobileConnect extends the self-service functionality of Physician Scheduler, empowering physicians to stay constantly informed of scheduling issues that effect their work and free time, as well as receive and respond to alerts, take steps to adjust their schedule, and interact with colleagues. Advanced interface enables physicians to view their individual schedules and swap shifts, as well as enter vacation requests and schedule changes.
- Care Value Management™ (CVM) MobileConnect Provides hospital enterprise employees with the same, interactive scheduling functionality offered through Physician Scheduler Mobile Connect. At any place and time, staff members can view current and future schedules, stay up to date on evolving scheduling issues and needs, submit requests, and exchange shifts and collaborate with co-workers.
With these powerful new tools, you can put real solutions to your scheduling challenges right in the palm of your physicians’ and staff members’ hands.
