Scheduling software?

[Gasworks]

What are you guys using to handle daily assignment and call schedules for a small practice.. say 10 providers max? I’m just looking for something better than a crummy google calendar that won’t cost $$$ to license and implement.

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[IMGASMD]

QGenda
Spinfusion
Those are the ones most people know.

 

[Gasworks]

Love QGenda.. waiting for a call back from their sales rep. The fact that they need me to go through a sales rep for 10 licenses leads me to believe that it won’t be affordable.

 

[nimbus]

Qgenda is fine for making a first draft of a call schedule. But you still need a human to tweak/fine tune it. And you need a human to make daily room/case assignments.

 

[pgg]

As far as I can tell there is no commercial software that meets the unique needs of an anesthesia department larger than 3 people - namely, a mix of monthly scheduling (call) and daily assignments that are extremely fluid day-to-day.

Which is why most everyone resorts to a hashed together mix of email, spreadsheets, post-it notes, paper calendars, and hope.

When I was in the Navy we looked at lots of options including Qgenda. In the end I wrote some custom web-based software to get 90% of the way there, but it's a hard problem and none of the commercial vendors seem interested in doing anesthesia justice.

 

[circleK]

We’ve used EZCall for the past decade plus for our call schedule. It’s worked well but is not all that flexible.

 

[Another Second Opinion]

What are you guys using to handle daily assignment and call schedules for a small practice.. say 10 providers max? I’m just looking for something better than a crummy google calendar that won’t cost $$$ to license and implement.

Lightning Bolt has a daily assignment tool in addition to their monthly call schedule platform: Lightning Bolt Solutions

 

[buccsmf1]

Im the scheduling head for my group and we use qgenda. overall i think its a very solid program. very very customizable, our rep is for the most part very responsive to small and larger concerns.

the automation software works well, usually gets about 90% of the scheduling done. I then review for errors and fill in gaps. We have about 30 docs in our group with 5 different call groups and it handles everything well. Also interfaces well with our billing dept.

we do not use it for daily assignments, just the creation of call/vacation/number assignments etc.

 

[jwk]

Our very large group uses QGenda. We have about 180 anesthetists, 80 docs, and a dozen or so NPs/PAs. We cover 3 hospitals and a dozen outpatient clinic locations, plus our four pain clinics. It generates a monthly schedule, and then we use it to create the daily schedule using a drag-and-drop method. It's somehow married with the hospital's own OR scheduling system. It took a lot of IT work putting it together, but QGenda's programmers have done a ton of different setups. They bought out Open Tempo a few years ago (which is what we used previously) and have treid to combine some of the best of both products. It is entirely cloud-based, so all components can be accessed from anywhere you have computer access. We use their app for our monthly scheduling, and it's request and swap functions are pretty robust. The daily schedule is generated and emailed to us late each afternoon.

QGenda works well for smaller practices too, although I have no idea on cost effectiveness. I'm guessing there is an initial startup fee, then there is some sort of ongoing licensing cost for each user and shift designation.

I am not a salesman - but we've used it for years and haven't found anything that works better for a large group.

 

[sevoflurane]

Same. We swap calls, give up calls, pick up calls, request calls. We have a range of 1.25 fte to .5 fte to no weekends as well as opting out of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, OB, trauma. Also does the cardiac and peds schedule.
At first I wasn’t sure, but over the years it has been great with all the tweaks we’ve done to it.

 

[TheSandMan]

We’ve been using ukg for a few years now. Always thought it was pricey at 4k/year for around 20 people. This year they just jacked up their rates almost 6k, including a $250 “economic recovery fee” due to inflation costs. I’m sure more fee increases are to come. Can’t recommend them.

 

[anbuitachi]

we use amion
no idea how much it costs

 

[pocafx]

We have amion but I liked QGenda much better

 

[Shamsports]

I believe Qgenda and UKG EZCall would work for you, but they are hella expensive.


I ended up making an automated spreadsheet using the Excel Solver tool (see attached example). It can automatically schedule people for call shifts based on vacations/seniority/holidays. Basically a Sudoku solver.

 

[epidural man]

As far as I can tell there is no commercial software that meets the unique needs of an anesthesia department larger than 3 people - namely, a mix of monthly scheduling (call) and daily assignments that are extremely fluid day-to-day.

Which is why most everyone resorts to a hashed together mix of email, spreadsheets, post-it notes, paper calendars, and hope.

When I was in the Navy we looked at lots of options including Qgenda. In the end I wrote some custom web-based software to get 90% of the way there, but it's a hard problem and none of the commercial vendors seem interested in doing anesthesia justice.

Did you write Asched?

 

[pgg]

Did you write Asched?

Yes

 

[epidural man]

Yes

Holy crap! That is fantastic software. Sell it to these guys.

Did you get paid for that? We use it at Balboa and I know Camp Pendelton uses it. I hope you got paid.

It sure beats the Excel spreadsheet we were using.

 

[pgg]

Did you get paid for that? We use it at Balboa and I know Camp Pendelton uses it. I hope you got paid.

LOL no, funny story there -

Short version: My initial reward was a non-punitive letter of caution signed by the CO of the hospital. 8 years later the Navy gave me a meritorious service medal for it - actually signed by the same person, now a flag officer. I now have both the medal citation and the reprimand for the same action framed together, as a nice way of fully encapsulating and commemorating the nature of government service.

Catch-22, like Idiocracy, are documentaries.


Long version: in 2014 I showed up at NMCP and they asked me to come up with a better scheduling system. Ideally at zero cost, of course. So I went to the IT department and asked them to help me with some intranet server space and other tech issues. They said, paraphrased, no, **** off, we don't have time for this, or any resources to give you, but knock yourself out if you want to figure it out yourself.

So I blew it off for a while, then got so frustrated with the scheduling system in place, that I wrote ASCHED on my own time. Initially we just used it at NMCP but as our staff moved to other places over the next few years, they wanted to use it at their current hospitals, so I set up instances on the server for them.

Our IT dept eventually noticed the project they didn't want to be part of was actually happening, and suddenly had "security concerns" about an "IT system" they had no control over. An IG investigation ensued and when everyone calmed down and stopped hyperventilating, we were allowed to continue using it, but I, my dept chair, and the IT dept chair were all awarded the aforementioned non-punitive letters of caution for our recklessness and poor judgement. Mine specifically noted my failure to consult IT prior to embarking on the project. You really can't make this stuff up.

Along with the approval to keep using our glorified calendar, came the requirement to comply with the DOD's risk management framework process. Which, to sum up, is an approximately 18-24 month review process that at one point was to involve a site visit by a team of engineers at a cost of $55,000 to us. This did not ever occur, in part because our IT department already had 32 other systems deemed more important, that were also delinquent on the RMF process. This was the second time they told me to **** off, mid RMF, after I'd painstakingly documented compliance with over 300 security controls mandated by NIST for low/low/low systems. Never did get the federal government stamp of approval, but it complies.

We also were required to move off an inexpensive commercial web host, and onto an expensive platform run by GSA (cloud.gov - which is really excellent).


I have no plans to ever commercialize it. In my previous life before medical school, in the pre dot-bomb era, I worked writing web software for a while.

One of the reasons I wound up in anesthesia was to minimize the time I was in contact with awake humans, aka customers. Getting back into the software industry isn't really on my agenda. I don't have time to do the marketing and tech support myself, and I don't have time to hire people to do it.

I still support the dozen or so DOD hospitals using it, but that doesn't take much time, as it's a mature/stable program after all these years. The only real update it's had in the last couple years was the surgical case import module that had to switch over from S3 to the new Genesis EMR.

I've thought about just releasing the code as freeware or shareware but even that would require a level of effort beyond my current free time.

 

[Simba1711]

We use EZCall. It’s okay. Easy to switch calls on the app but my gripe is that the assignments aren’t spaced out. EZCall will sometimes clump calls and late calls very close together one week and then I’ll have 2-3 weeks with no calls.

 

[circleK]

We use EZCall. It’s okay. Easy to switch calls on the app but my gripe is that the assignments aren’t spaced out. EZCall will sometimes clump calls and late calls very close together one week and then I’ll have 2-3 weeks with no calls.

Yes, we’ve had to really lay out a ton of very specific rules into the software in order to try to best avoid the call clumping with EZCall

 

[abolt18]

LOL no, funny story there -

Short version: My initial reward was a non-punitive letter of caution signed by the CO of the hospital. 8 years later the Navy gave me a meritorious service medal for it - actually signed by the same person, now a flag officer. I now have both the medal citation and the reprimand for the same action framed together, as a nice way of fully encapsulating and commemorating the nature of government service.

Catch-22, like Idiocracy, are documentaries.


Long version: in 2014 I showed up at NMCP and they asked me to come up with a better scheduling system. Ideally at zero cost, of course. So I went to the IT department and asked them to help me with some intranet server space and other tech issues. They said, paraphrased, no, **** off, we don't have time for this, or any resources to give you, but knock yourself out if you want to figure it out yourself.

So I blew it off for a while, then got so frustrated with the scheduling system in place, that I wrote ASCHED on my own time. Initially we just used it at NMCP but as our staff moved to other places over the next few years, they wanted to use it at their current hospitals, so I set up instances on the server for them.

Our IT dept eventually noticed the project they didn't want to be part of was actually happening, and suddenly had "security concerns" about an "IT system" they had no control over. An IG investigation ensued and when everyone calmed down and stopped hyperventilating, we were allowed to continue using it, but I, my dept chair, and the IT dept chair were all awarded the aforementioned non-punitive letters of caution for our recklessness and poor judgement. Mine specifically noted my failure to consult IT prior to embarking on the project. You really can't make this stuff up.

Along with the approval to keep using our glorified calendar, came the requirement to comply with the DOD's risk management framework process. Which, to sum up, is an approximately 18-24 month review process that at one point was to involve a site visit by a team of engineers at a cost of $55,000 to us. This did not ever occur, in part because our IT department already had 32 other systems deemed more important, that were also delinquent on the RMF process. This was the second time they told me to **** off, mid RMF, after I'd painstakingly documented compliance with over 300 security controls mandated by NIST for low/low/low systems. Never did get the federal government stamp of approval, but it complies.

We also were required to move off an inexpensive commercial web host, and onto an expensive platform run by GSA (cloud.gov - which is really excellent).


I have no plans to ever commercialize it. In my previous life before medical school, in the pre dot-bomb era, I worked writing web software for a while.

One of the reasons I wound up in anesthesia was to minimize the time I was in contact with awake humans, aka customers. Getting back into the software industry isn't really on my agenda. I don't have time to do the marketing and tech support myself, and I don't have time to hire people to do it.

I still support the dozen or so DOD hospitals using it, but that doesn't take much time, as it's a mature/stable program after all these years. The only real update it's had in the last couple years was the surgical case import module that had to switch over from S3 to the new Genesis EMR.

I've thought about just releasing the code as freeware or shareware but even that would require a level of effort beyond my current free time.

That is wild. Thanks for sharing!

 

[T-burglar]

That is wild. Thanks for sharing!

This is actually really cool man, I’m in the process of teaching myself HTML CSS and JavaScript so I can make a web based solution for many of our problems that I have become too frustrated with.

The last time I coded anything was as a 14 year old and I’m 40

 

[pgg]

That is wild. Thanks for sharing!

Easy to laugh about it now ...


Wasn't the first time I got in trouble with military IT weenies because I was doing their job for them, or better than them.

Ten years before that I ran an unauthorized fundraiser to buy satellite internet equipment for a battalion of Marines I was assigned to in Salerno, Afghanistan. The Army's "internet cafe" never worked so I got us our own, with hookers and blackjack.

A really nice guy named Ernie contacted us through the fundraiser and offered to help. Turns out he ran a web site called Ernie's House Of Whoop Ass (now no longer in business, though ehowa.com still has a mildly NSFW placeholder) and his band of merry users and pleasant miscreants gave us about $3500, and we got DHL to fly in a 1.9 meter state-of-the-art-for-2004 dish, satellite modem, and some other hardware. Some Marines stole a load of concrete from one of the provincial reconstruction teams and we planted the dish in the middle of our camp. A good time was had by all and I was not court martialed, though I did get a stern talking-to about the optics of the Marine Corps soliciting donations from a "porn" site. Which I stressed wasn't really the case but they told me to quit arguing and just quietly go about running the thing.

 

[narcusprince]

As far as I can tell there is no commercial software that meets the unique needs of an anesthesia department larger than 3 people - namely, a mix of monthly scheduling (call) and daily assignments that are extremely fluid day-to-day.

Which is why most everyone resorts to a hashed together mix of email, spreadsheets, post-it notes, paper calendars, and hope.

When I was in the Navy we looked at lots of options including Qgenda. In the end I wrote some custom web-based software to get 90% of the way there, but it's a hard problem and none of the commercial vendors seem interested in doing anesthesia justice.

Asched was a hell of a program. Chatbotgt can actually write code for a scheduling program if you can manage to get all the inputs right.

 

[Simba1711]

Our group is thinking about getting rid of EZCall and just using excel to manage people’s vacations. Do you guys have any tips or apps that your recommend ?