How quickly can you fill your shifts?

We recently set a new record for the time to fill an annual on-call roster: fifteen minutes. Let me write that again: 365 shifts across a 12-month roter allocated across over 200 doctors in less than 15 minutes. See 'Hospital B' on the chart here.Actually, we thought we'd set a record only a few hours earlier, with another hospital, filling 80% of their shifts in 20 minutes ('Hospital A').These hospitals demonstrated some lessons in common that can apply to all hospitals:

• Strong leadership from the senior doctors who had set clear rules regarding the rosters
• Thinking that started well before the roster window was due to open, and months before the first shift that was to be staffed.
• Clear, early communication to all the roster participants regarding expectations and timing
• And, of course, using a good rostering tool like HosPortal.