Insights into physician scheduling: a case study of public hospital departments in Sweden

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe current physician scheduling and concomitant opportunities for improvement in public hospital departments in Sweden. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 13 departments spread geographically across Sweden covering seven different specialties participated in the study. Data were collected through interviews with individuals involved in creating physician schedules. All departments investigated provided copies of the documents necessary for physician scheduling. Findings – Physician scheduling required the temporal coordination of patients, physicians, non-physician staff, rooms and equipment. A six-step process for creating physician schedules could be distinguished: capacity and demand overview, demand goal and schedule setting, vacation and leave requests, schedule creation, schedule revision, and schedule execution. Several opportunities for improvement could be outlined; e.g. overreliance on memory, lacking coordination of resources, and redundant data entering. Research limitations/implications – The paucity of previous studies on physician scheduling lends an exploratory character to this study and calls for a more thorough evaluation of the feasibility and effects of the approaches proposed. The study excluded the scheduling of non-physician staff. Practical implications – To improve physician scheduling and enable timeliness, three approaches are proposed: reinforcing centralisation, creating learning opportunities, and improving integration. Originality/value – This paper is among the few to investigate physician scheduling, which is essential for delivering high quality care, particularly concerning timeliness. Several opportunities for improvement identified in this study are not exclusive to physician scheduling but are pervasive in healthcare processes in general.