New leave functions

One of the reasons HosPortal came into being was to manage the complex interactions between doctors' leave and holidays, and the on-call and operating theatre allocations. When Chris agreed to help one of his hospitals solve this problem he did not know that he was giving birth to what would eventually be HosPortal.In recent months, one of the most common enhancement requests we have received is to make leave management even easier. We've been listening and this week we have launched our improved leave tools.

Administering leave and holidays

As a leave administrator, you now have additional tools to assist:

• Leave metrics on a calendar view to show all conflicts with on-call and theatre allocations, the number of other people of the same type on leave on any day, and the total number of people on leave.
• Leave rules that can automate the process of accepting and declining leave requests if the leave meets certain criteria. Examples might be:
  • automatically approve all leave that is more than 1 month away, and for less than 2 weeks duration, and where there are no conflicts with the on-call roster, or
  • automatically reject any registrar leave over the Christmas holiday period that includes any days where there are already more than 5 registrars on leave, or
  • have an administrator review all leave requests that apply during the dates of a medical conference.
• Flexible and dynamic leave rules that can be updated and changed quickly and easily.

Self-administration of leave and holidays

It is now also easier for users applying for leave:

• Far greater transparency regarding who else, and how many other people, are also on leave
• The ability to better search for leave at a time that it is more likely to be approved
• Greater certainty and quicker turnaround especially if the hospital uses the leave rules (but also if the hospital doesn't use the leave rules). Leave can be approved as soon as the submit button is selected, and leave that is in contravention of the rules cannot be submitted at all. Users are presented with clear information regarding why leave was rejected.

So now the process of managing leave requests and approvals can be reduced considerably, to the benefit of users and administrators.Please get in touch if you want to know more.