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.
