Do you spend hours trying to come up with a schedule that will meet everyone’s requirements? What is the distribution of assignments to physicians? Does the current list of absense request cause coverage problems? On how many weekends did a particular physician work? On which days did a physician request to be scheduled? Which days off? What is the spacing in days between undesirable calls? Did anyone get scheduled for consecutive weekends? What is the distribution of holidays? How many total days did each physician work? What were the tallies and distributions from past schedules? Are these being taken into account in the current schedule? Are the physician pairings agreeable? Did a physician working late night assignment get scheduled for early morning call the following day? Did part-time physicians get scheduled for apportioned amount of work?
JustIntime Scheduler automatically generates schedules that meet all the above objectives or as defined by your unique set of rules to produce a schedule that balances institutional and individual needs.
The table below explains some of the common problems in medical staff scheduling and what JustInTime provides as a solution.
| Common Problems |
JustInTime Solutions |
| Scheduling is time consuming: Generating schedules takes several hours to several days. Even scheduling a small group of 7 physicians can take anywhere from 2-12 hours. Potentially, this is time taken away from patients, family or free time. |
JustInTime is quick: After defining the scheduling policies in the initial setup, JustInTime can generate a new schedule by a click of a button. Once the schedule is generated, users can modify it if desired. Saving time for physicians makes JustInTime cost-effective. |
| Intractable to generate equitable schedules: How do you balance the needs of the individual with that of the group? For staff of 3 or more, keeping track of scheduling policies, tallies of assignments, spacing between calls, requests for days off and days on, individual preferences, and considerations of agreeable staff pairings can be overwhelming. |
JustInTime is just in time: JustInTime by default schedules for equal total days, equal days per assignment, equal days schedule in day types (weekdays, weekends, holidays, noxious days, etc), equal days between calls, equal days between calls for particular assignments, equal mix staff pairings. Rules and preferences with varying priorities can be defined to override/customize the default scheduling behavior and default definition of equality. |
| Scheduling rules are not black or white: Scheduling is often an ad-hoc art. In a typical organization, there are overwhelming numbers of constraints to take into account. The constraints are often conflicting. How do you resolve conflicts? How do you handle exceptions to rules? How does a group agree what are the priorities of rules? How can the priorities of rule be systematically and consistently applied? |
JustInTime allows you to rank rules.
As the old saying goes, there's an exception to every rule. In recognition of this, the flexibility in JustInTime allows you to rank rules by assigning priorities to every rule or request. When there is a conflict, a high priority rule will override a lower priority rule. There is no limit on the number of rules and different levels of priorities. |
Why is the schedule the way it is?
Staff members often seek an explanation as to why they are scheduled on a particular day. Not knowing all the other rules and constraints, the choice of a particular schedule or a scheduling decision may seem random or biased. |
JustInTime explains the rationale:
The rationale behind a scheduling decision is particularly important when the schedule is automatically generated. For this reason, JustInTime offers detailed explanation of its decisions. For any particular day on the calendar, you simply click on the calendar and JustInTime will explain why a staff member was chosen for that day. It also clearly explains all the constraints that are in effect for a given day. |
Schedules are inflexible:
Schedules often need to be changed. A staff member becomes ill or takes leave of absence due to personal reasons. A new staff member may join or leave. Just when resources are limited, a new schedule needs to be generated that takes the new event into account. |
JustInTime is dynamic/adaptive:
With JustInTime, time is a continuum and any portion of the schedule can be revised with a click of a button whether the portion needing revision is a day, a week, month or a year. When a new event occurs, you simply re-schedule the remaining period or a period specified by a start and a stop date. |
| Schedules can be misplaced or outdated: Where is the latest schedule? Modifications need often be made after the distribution of the initial schedule. Call swaps between two physicians and re-scheduling due to new events is often required. Maintaining the current and latest schedule can be difficult. |
JustInTime is always accessible:
With JustInTime, there is a central place for the latest schedule. The schedule can also be published on a password protected website which can be viewed from anywhere you have internet connection. Users having sufficient access privileges can also swap shifts online, keeping the scheduling current. |
Scheduling is complex:
Satisfying equality requirements as well as rules and policies is more complex than it may appear. This is because these requirements often conflict with each other; meeting one requirement often compromises another. In addition, individuals have recurring or non-recurring preferences such as request for days off and days on. Remembering all this can overwhelm the human scheduler. |
JustInTime is simple and fun to use:
JustInTime was designed from the very beginning to be easy to use. Rules are specified in plain English. Recurring rules and preferences need only be entered once. Users navigate through the software using friendly icons which have consistent meaning across contexts. |
Schedules are myopic:
Even an optimal schedule for a given period can lead to inequities because the number of weekends/holidays or noxious calls may not be evenly divisible during a scheduling period. To get equitable distribution over a long time, statistics from past schedules needs to be considered. However, this is not tractable with a human scheduler. |
JustInTime remembers scheduling history: JustInTime keeps track of past schedules by remembering the tally of various assignments to staff member, days between calls, assignments of staff members to various day types (weekends, holidays, etc). JustInTime uses this detailed statistical archive to determine future schedules. As a result, JustInTime defines equality in a larger context. |
No metrics on the schedule:
There is no easy way to measure the “goodness” of a schedule. Schedules generation is subjective, making it difficult to analyze whether a particular schedule balances the needs of the individual with those of the group. |
JustInTime generates reports and statistics: These reports allow you to get a summary of the schedule. With JustInTime, you can generate a report showing tallies for total days scheduled, total days per assignment, staff pairing statistics, total days scheduled during weekends, holidays, or any day type you describe. Reports can be for all of scheduling history or be limited to a given date range. |
Perception of bias:
Although it is often not voiced, staff members are generally concerned that the schedule generated is not impartial. Whether the bias is real or perceived, this can affect group productivity. |
JustInTime is impartial:
Since JustInTime is automated, concerns about impartiality is not an issue. |
