For health systems
Fulkerson Advisors writes physician scheduling software for one department at a time. It's built around the department's own rules for call, time off, swaps and fair shares, and the department owns it. The work starts from our study of the open jobs at 416 US health systems, which shows who keeps doctors' schedules today.
Written for the department chair, the practice manager or the medical staff office that keeps a schedule today. It says what our research found, what the software has to handle, and how we build it.
Mostly people with another job. At 416 US health systems, 88% of the open jobs that keep doctors' schedules aren't scheduling jobs. They belong to practice managers, medical staff coordinators, switchboard operators and the doctors themselves, and physicians, APPs and nurses hold 30% of them.
In 72% of those postings, the schedule gets a passing mention in a long list of other duties. The study lists every system and the jobs it posted.
The rules, and they rarely get written down. 3% of the postings say the work has to be shared fairly, and 9% mention swaps or call-outs. The software has to hold the rules below, as the department states them.
Call
Who takes call, how often, and who backs them up.
Time off
Vacation, conference and leave requests, checked against coverage before anyone says yes.
Swaps and call-outs
Trades between clinicians, and who covers when someone is out on the day.
Fair shares
Nights, weekends and holidays counted for each person across the year, so the balance is visible.
Several sites
One schedule across the hospitals and clinics the department covers.
Many departments do, most often QGenda or Amion. A packaged scheduler stores the schedule and shows everyone the same version of it. Someone still has to fit the department's rules into its settings and keep them there.
In our study, 38 of the 40 postings that name a scheduling product aren't scheduling jobs, so the person running the product keeps the schedule on top of other work. Software written for the department starts from its rules and drafts the schedule from them, and the person who keeps the schedule today reviews the draft.
It's the Build, our twelve-week engagement, applied to one department's schedule.
Week 1
We write down the department's rules with the person who keeps the schedule today, and measure how long a month's schedule takes to build.
Week 3
The stop point. Either the software is on a path to daily use, or we say it isn't and refund the rest.
Week 6
The software drafts a real month, and the department checks it against the one it built by hand.
Week 12
The month's schedule is built in the software. The department owns the code, and a named person on the team can run it.
It connects to what the department uses today, such as the EHR or a packaged scheduler, where those systems offer a way in. We confirm access in the first week.
The department does. The code is yours, and a named person on your team works in it with us so they can run it after we leave.
Yes. One department's schedule is the unit of the Build. A second department reuses what the first one built and adds its own rules.
The person who keeps the schedule today, last year's schedules, and the department's rules as it states them, including the ones nobody has written down.
You describe the schedule and its rules. We tell you whether it's worth building, and what the first twelve weeks would look like.
