Scheduling simplified: How the University of New Mexico Health created a single source of truth

Many healthcare organizations are using multiple solutions to manage provider work, on-call and resident block schedules — often leading to inaccurate schedules and unfair distribution of workloads.

During a Becker's Hospital Review webinar sponsored by TigerConnect, three healthcare professionals discussed how The University of New Mexico Health (UNM Health) in Albuquerque — which had a complex, outdated scheduling system — combined physician and resident scheduling systems into a single platform to enhance care coordination, save time and increase productivity. The panelists were:

• Michael Louie, MD, associate program director, UNM School of Medicine
• Phil Bolyard, systems analyst in communications, UNM Hospitals
• Gina Loxtercamp, implementation project manager, TigerConnect

Four key takeaways were:

1. UNM Health's longstanding scheduling solution was complex and confusing. "It was the Wild, Wild West of scheduling," Bolyard said. "Each department had its own schedules and schedulers. We had no naming conventions, so for those individual departments, names made sense, but for all other departments, it could be a guessing game.”  Switching to TigerConnect gave UNM Health better access controls for schedulers, improved reporting capabilities, enabled a reliable integration with the messaging application and centralized oversight of clinical coverage.
   
   
2. A multidisciplinary team, led from the top, was critical to the implementation of TigerConnect. UNM Health had a clear vision for change. Regarding implementation, "So many departments were part of this," Bolyard said. "We had great support from our hospital leadership, with monthly oversight meetings. As a result, we had great two-way integration between roles and the schedule and centralized control over the entire scheduling software solution. TigerConnect was incredibly flexible and created both customized training and individual training sessions for departments with complex schedules."
   
   
3. TigerConnect helped incorporate resident scheduling into a hospital-wide platform, eliminating inefficiencies and errors. "With 108 residents, we have the largest number of residents of any department at UNM Health," Dr. Louie said. "We had multiple issues with our prior scheduling platform that decreased efficiency and scheduling. TigerConnect addressed these shortcomings, such as inflexible patterns, a user interface that was not intuitive and an inability to view and adjust staffing requirements in real time."
   
   
4. As an early adopter of the new Resident Scheduling features, UNM Health has helped TigerConnect refine its solution. According to Loxtercamp, UNM Health’s feedback was critical to improving the features the company offers. "The experience was crucial to learning what a large resident program really needs to be efficient," she said. "Based on feedback from the UNM Health team and other early access customers, we were able to learn together and come to where we are today."

The partnership between UNM Health and TigerConnect has resulted in improved scheduling and significant benefits for UNM Health, including substantial time saved on provider requests and schedule creation.  This partnership also offers value to TigerConnect in helping shape and build a better Physician Scheduling product for all TigerConnect customers. 

To register for upcoming webinars, click here.