Making it easy to schedule 7,500 tasks for 33 cardiologists
The challenge
Our group of 33 cardiologists has to create two six-month schedules per year. It’s very complicated—we have to manage 45 intra- and interhospital tasks, which means that we have to assign around 7,500 tasks to the physicians in our group, while making sure that we respect several rules for fair workload distribution. We had to find a computerized solution that let us customize our task assignments while also reducing the risk of human error and the time required to create such a complicated schedule.
PetalMD’s solution
Out of all the planning systems we tried out, PetalMD was the only one capable of adapting to the constraints of our department’s complex schedule. PetalMD also provides remarkable customer service; its representatives made sure that the system was seamlessly implemented.
Dr. André Kokis
and Dr. Jean-François Gobeil, cardiologists
Making it easy for a physician to balance the competing schedules of two different medical groups
The challenge
I work mainly in an emergency department, but I also practice at La Cité médicale, a medical clinic. My main challenge is to synchronize unavailable times and responsibilities at two different places: when I work at the hospital, I’m not available at the medical clinic and vice versa. To avoid problems—like being double-booked or booked during my vacation—I had to constantly communicate change requests to the planners at the hospital’s emergency department and at the medical clinic.
PetalMD’s solution
Now that these two institutions are using PetalMD, my emergency department and medical clinic tasks are automatically in my calendar, along with my unavailable times—and I only had to enter the information once. Now I can manage my schedule from a single platform, which means that I don’t have to communicate constantly with the planners. Everything is now carried out automatically: my iPhone is even synchronized with PetalMD and I can access my updated schedule anywhere, anytime... it’s really fantastic!
Dr. Pascal Rochette,
emergency physician
Efficiently managing a high number of task changes per month
The challenge
Our group members carry out many task changes per month. This flexibility and adaptability is a major contributing factor to our physicians’ quality of life. As soon as the planner physician publishes the schedule created according to our fair workload distribution rules, our member physicians can begin negotiating changes. Before we started using PetalMD, all changes had to be written out by hand. We wanted to find a more efficient and flexible method.
PetalMD’s solution
PetalMD allowed us to replace our paper register. All of our changes are made directly in the online schedule by our administrative assistant or member physicians—they are all happy to have easy access to a calendar that stays updated on its own. We’ve been using PetalMD since June 2010 and we make a very high number of task changes per month. Our physicians and our administrative assistant are unanimous in their opinion: PetalMD makes it easy to manage scheduling changes—it even contributes to our physicians’ quality of life.
Dr. Marie-Maud Couture,
head emergency physician
Designing a user-friendly, organized and portable library
The challenge
Our department absolutely had to centralize a large amount of information, protocols and links to external resources. We were losing precious time looking for documents—especially because we had to make sure we had the most recent versions.
PetalMD’s solution
We were already using PetalMD to manage our group schedules, so it was only natural for us to turn to them when we needed to centralize our documents. PetalMD has become much more than a schedule management solution—it became our virtual intranet where we could easily access our documentation, links to external resources, physicians’ schedules, information on group events and all messages related to the department. PetalMD truly helped our physicians to save time, not to mention the consistent effort from PetalMD to continuously improve the platform.
Dr. Isabelle Bertrand,
emergency physician
Helping administrative assistants manage five sub-teams from a centralized dashboard
The challenge
Although our physicians’ schedules were created centrally by the head of our cardiology department, the responsibility for managing scheduling changes, communications and document sharing was assigned to several sub-teams. This decentralization seriously reduced our efficiency because the teams managed issues that affected the entire department (e.g., scheduling, documentation and communication). We needed to find a solution that was flexible but also respected the department’s overall management structure.
PetalMD’s solution
The PetalMD solution was configured according to the needs of the group’s cardiologists in a way that respected the existing structure. The multiple group functionality of PetalMD’s platform enabled us to create a main group that united the cardiologists’ schedules and the department’s communications, while also enabling us to create sub-groups through which the various divisions could carry out their daily management of their tasks and communications. Each division has its own site with the PetalMD system, thus enabling our administrative assistants to manage their respective teams without losing sight of the department as a whole. They are saving precious time when making task changes, communicating with the group or even when simply trying to find out where our physicians are.
Our entire team of doctors was trained on the system within minutes, and we unanimously recognized the benefits of implementing this type of scheduling and communication system. The PetalMD platform met our very high expectations. PetalMD really helps me to save time. Dr. Robert De Larochellière,
cardiology department head
The PetalMD staff are really innovative; they provided us with flawless support throughout the entire implementation process. It’s always a pleasure to work with them. Brigitte Tanguay,
administrative assistant
Providing Dr. Morin with a complete organization solution for his team of rheumatologists and administrative assistants
The challenge
The members of our team include seven rheumatologists and four administrative assistants who have to stay in contact in order to manage several issues that affect the organization of our work at the clinic and the hospital. We needed a comprehensive solution for all of our team’s management requirements: scheduling, announcements, emails, department meetings, document sharing, etc.
PetalMD’s solution
PetalMD’s solution really surpassed my expectations. Since our team began using it, I’ve been able to transfer the entire management of my professional and personal activities to the PetalMD calendar, which is synchronized with my iPhone. Our physicians and administrative assistants use only the PetalMD messaging service for all internal communications. It’s great, we have access from anywhere. I recommend PetalMD to all medical groups, large and small alike—you’ll soon find you can’t do without it!
Dr. Frederic Morin,
head rheumatologist