With three general steps, groups can benefit from call-sharing just like bigger practices.

Physicians are feeling the squeeze these days: decreasing numbers of available on-call physicians, increasing mergers, on-call compensation issues, and the need to provide 24/7 on-call coverage is taking its toll on physician morale no matter the size of the group. The increasing use of hospitalists and technology such as EHR has great potential to alleviate stress for physicians in medium and large groups, but what steps can “smaller” practices take? Here are some ideas I have learned while training smaller on-call scheduling groups.

After the industry "baseline rewards" of salary, benefits and a few perks to assure "fairness" are met... then what? David Pink’s book “Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us” may have some new ideas.

When was the last time your physician group got together to discuss on-call? Was it to simply decide the Holiday coverage for the year, or did the discussion include several “by the way” comments and decisions? Were the results formally recorded and agreed upon or were some things assumed?

What happens with ass-u-me?

The Scheduler’s Axiom of “never publish an
on-call schedule you would not do yourself”, is even more relevant after recent episodes of Control Tower Operators being disciplined for napping on the job.  How does the way you schedule on-call affect next-day physician performance and patient outcomes? How much recovery time is needed after night on-call duty, and is it different depending on Specialty?

FAQ from Providers regarding getting Call Schedules, iCalendars, and SmartPhones
What is an iCal subscription?
iCal is an Internet Calendar Subscription link which you can use to subscribe to a calendar. Once in place, you can view that calendar in Outlook 2007 and various on-line iCalendars such as Google.

iCal links are great for Physicians who are constantly on the go. The iCal “feeds” are periodically updated according to the frequency set in the "target" calendar application (such as Outlook) so the views are always current.

The quickest, easiest way to learn new physican scheduling software is working one-to-one with an expert. Your "personal trainer" can guide you to be sure everything is covered and can interactively answer questions unique to your situation. There is no need to scour manuals to point you in the right direction for your particular questions.