On-call roster software for hospital departments

On-call roster software builds, publishes and tracks the after-hours cover for a medical department: who is first and second on call, for which service, on which nights and weekends, with the rest periods and fairness quotas that follow. HosPortal has done this for Australian and New Zealand hospitals since 2008, and it is the part of medical rostering that spreadsheets and general workforce systems handle worst.

What an on-call roster has to get right

A hospital on-call roster is not a shift roster with different hours. It has to hold several things at once: the tiers of cover (first on, second on, consultant back-up), the services covered (general surgery, obstetrics, paediatric anaesthesia), the rules that follow a night on call (a post-call recovery day, minimum rest before the next clinical session), and a running count of how many nights, weekends and public holidays each person has done so the load stays fair across the year. Add leave, conference absences and locums, and the roster changes weekly.

How HosPortal rosters on-call

• Templates for the pattern. Define the on-call pattern once (1-in-6 with a second-on tier, say) over any cycle length and roll it forward; changes from a future date do not disturb published weeks.
• Rules enforced as you build. Shift Conflict Rules block a clinical list the morning after a night on call, and Work Rules cap consecutive on-call days or weekends per month. Breaches are flagged before publishing, not discovered in the corridor.
• Counters for fairness. HosPortal counts on-call nights, weekends and public holidays per clinician and shows the totals on the roster view, so disputes end with a number rather than a memory.
• Swaps under your rules. Staff put on-call shifts on the Market or swap directly; the department sets who may take what, and every change is audit-logged.
• Cover when someone drops out. Vacant on-call slots are flagged, eligible replacements are listed, and SMS goes out in one step.
• The roster in everyone’s pocket. Native iOS and Android apps, iCal sync to Outlook and Google, and SMS alerts when a shift changes within a set window.

On-call is rostered alongside the same department’s theatre lists, clinics and ward rounds, so a consultant’s total commitment is visible in one place. Anaesthesia, emergency and ICU departments each use it differently; the case study from Royal Hobart Hospital shows the build time falling from four days to five hours.

Frequently asked questions