What does ShiftAdmin cost?

ShiftAdmin does not publish pricing, so we will not invent a number. MedAligna is $99, $149 or $249 per month per location, published in full with no quote form.

Does MedAligna auto-generate schedules too?

Yes. It generates against your coverage requirements, rules, preferences and fairness counters, and produces a draft you review cell by cell; it never publishes on its own.

Can we trial MedAligna without a sales call?

Yes. Fourteen days, every feature, no card, and nobody will phone you. You can also drive the live demo right now without signing up at all.

Is ShiftAdmin good for nursing, or only physicians?

Its heritage is physician and clinical scheduling, particularly emergency medicine, and that is where it is strongest. Nursing organisations tend to need ratio compliance with acuity, credential blocking, federal exclusion screening and, in skilled nursing, the CMS PBJ file, and those are not what it was built around.

Can we import our ShiftAdmin schedule?

Yes: a CSV of your people and a CSV of your assignments. Roles, dates and shifts map across, and missing shifts are created as it goes. Set your rules once and the import checks every row against them, reporting what it refused instead of writing it in quietly.

What about home care or skilled nursing?

Neither is ShiftAdmin's territory. MedAligna schedules home-care visits with travel time between clients and caregiver continuity, and generates the quarterly CMS Payroll-Based Journal file for skilled-nursing facilities from hours already captured.

Is ShiftAdmin owned by QGenda?

Yes. The product is marketed as 'Shift Admin, a QGenda Company' (g2.com, as of July 2026), and it shares QGenda's enterprise, quote-on-request sales model. That is worth knowing if part of your reason for looking at ShiftAdmin was to avoid the enterprise buying process.

How much does ShiftAdmin cost per provider?

ShiftAdmin does not publish a per-provider rate, so we will not invent one. Third-party analyses estimate roughly $49,000 in the first year for a 10-provider group including a one-time implementation often cited above $20,000 (schedulingwiz.com, July 2026) — an unconfirmed estimate, not a ShiftAdmin quote. MedAligna is $99, $149 or $249 per location per month, published in full.

Does ShiftAdmin charge a setup fee?

Enterprise scheduling of this kind is typically sold with a one-time implementation, and third-party breakdowns cite a setup component above $20,000 for a small group (schedulingwiz.com, July 2026). Confirm the figure with ShiftAdmin directly. MedAligna has no setup fee and no implementation project.

What is the best ShiftAdmin alternative for nursing or skilled nursing?

One that treats clinical rules as enforcement: credential blocking, OIG exclusion screening, nurse-to-patient ratios with acuity, and the CMS PBJ file. That is the surface ShiftAdmin was not built around and the surface MedAligna is built on, at a flat per-location price with a self-serve trial.

Is ShiftAdmin a good product?

Yes, genuinely. Its automated generation is strong, it is well reviewed by emergency departments (softwareadvice.com, capterra.com), and it is a KLAS-recognised name. This page is not an argument that it is bad; it is an argument about who it is priced and sold for. If you are a health system, it is a serious choice.

Comparison · verified July 2026

ShiftAdmin alternatives, without the sales pitch

ShiftAdmin is a physician and clinical scheduling platform known for automated schedule generation and shift-swapping, used widely in emergency medicine. It generates rotas against configured rules and preferences, and offers a request-and-swap workflow for staff.

Start 14-day free trial Open the live demo

From $99/month per location · No sales call · No card to start

At a glance

ShiftAdmin's automated schedule generation is genuinely strong, and it is the main reason emergency departments have used it for years.
It is bought rather than signed up for: pricing is not published and there is a sales process, which is a poor fit for a single department that wants to fix its own rota this month.
Its clinical rule surface is narrower than its scheduling surface: credential blocking, exclusion screening, ratios with acuity and CMS PBJ are not what it was built around.
It has no home-care visit scheduling and no clinician-owned credential wallet.
MedAligna also auto-generates, publishes its pricing ($99–$249 per location per month), and lets you trial it for 14 days without speaking to anyone.

What ShiftAdmin does well

Automated generation is genuinely its strength. Feed it a set of rules and preferences and it will produce a rota that respects them, which is not a trivial computer-science problem and is done properly here. Emergency departments in particular have leaned on it for years for exactly this reason.

The swap and request workflows are mature, and clinicians who have used it are comfortable in it. That familiarity is real value, and it is the main thing you give up by moving.

Where the fit breaks down

It is bought, not signed up for. Pricing is not published, there is a sales process, and a single department that simply wants to fix its own rota this month generally cannot. If you are a twelve-provider clinic or a ninety-bed skilled-nursing facility, you will find the process built for someone larger than you.

The clinical rule surface is narrower than the scheduling surface. Credential expiry that blocks an assignment, federal exclusion screening, nurse-to-patient ratios with acuity, CMS Payroll-Based Journal export, home-care visit scheduling with travel time. These are not what ShiftAdmin was built around, and it shows if they are what you need.

What it actually costs

The first-year number, and where it comes from

ShiftAdmin does not publish a price, so the only figures available are third-party ones. We repeat them as exactly that — estimates, from people who are not ShiftAdmin — because guessing at a real price would break the one rule this page exists to keep.

List price

Not published

Quoted per provider, per month, after a sales conversation. ShiftAdmin publishes no rate card.

First-year estimate

~$49,000

Third-party breakdown for a 10-provider group, subscription plus implementation. An estimate, not a ShiftAdmin quote.

Setup

$20,000+

One-time implementation is a frequently cited component of that first-year figure, not an ongoing charge.

The shape of the number matters more than the number. Enterprise scheduling is priced by provider count and carries a one-time implementation, so the first year is a subscription plus a setup project, and the setup is often the larger half. For a health system with a workforce team, that is a normal purchase. For a single emergency department deciding this quarter, it is a capital conversation to fix a scheduling problem.

MedAligna is the other model on purpose: $99, $149 or $249 per location per month, published, month to month, with no implementation project and no per-provider line that grows every time you hire. Twenty per cent comes off from three locations. You can read the whole price on the pricing page before anyone knows your name, and start a 14-day trial without a card.

First-year and setup figures are third-party estimates for a 10-provider group, unconfirmed by ShiftAdmin (schedulingwiz.com, ShiftAdmin vs QGenda pricing analysis, as of July 2026). ShiftAdmin does not publish pricing; we do not quote a per-provider rate on its behalf.

Which one is right for you

ShiftAdmin is a capable platform, and the cost of switching a working system is real. Here is the honest split.

Stay with ShiftAdmin if…

Automated generation for a physician group is the whole job and it is working.
Your clinicians are fluent in it and nobody is complaining.
You have no need for credential blocking, ratios, PBJ or home-care visits.
It is already paid for and there is no live problem to solve.

Look at MedAligna if…

You are a nursing organisation, a skilled-nursing facility, or a home care agency rather than a physician group.
You need credential expiry to block, and federal exclusion screening.
You want to buy it today, at a published price, without a sales process.
You want the clinicians to own their credentials and carry them between jobs.

MedAligna vs ShiftAdmin, row by row

Binary, verifiable facts only. No adjectives; an opinion is not a comparison.

Capability	MedAligna	ShiftAdmin
Automated schedule generation	Yes	Yes
Shift swaps and requests	Yes	Yes
Blocks a shift when a licence has expired	Yes	Partial
Federal exclusion (OIG) screening	Yes	No
Nurse-to-patient ratios with acuity	Yes	No
CMS Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) export	Yes	No
Home-care visit scheduling with travel time	Yes	No
Credential wallet owned by the clinician	Yes	No
Fill waterfall before suggesting an agency	Yes	No
Self-serve: sign up and publish today	Yes	No
Published pricing	$99–249/mo per location	Not published

ShiftAdmin is a trademark of its owner. MedAligna is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ShiftAdmin. Comparison compiled from publicly available documentation and pricing pages, verified July 2026. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.

The honest bit

You should probably stay on ShiftAdmin if…

It is a capable platform, and the cost of switching a working system is real.

Automated generation for a physician group is the whole job, and it is working.
Your clinicians are fluent in it and nobody is complaining.
You do not need credential blocking, ratios, PBJ or home-care visits.
You already have it, it is paid for, and there is no live problem to solve.

We would rather you stayed and told someone we were straight with you than switched and regretted it. This category is small, and reputations travel.

How to choose emergency-department scheduling software

A checklist that scores ten out of ten is a brochure. Here is an honest one, including the criteria where ShiftAdmin is the stronger answer.

01How good is the automated generation, really?

For a physician group this is the whole job. Ask for a live build against your own rules and preferences, not a canned demo, and watch it handle your hardest week.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna proposes a candidate for every open seat — hardest-to-fill first, your own staff before agency — and you approve the list; each committed row is then re-checked under a database lock. It suggests; it never publishes on its own. ShiftAdmin's generator is mature and its emergency-medicine heritage is real; if optimized physician generation is the entire requirement, weigh that honestly.

02Does it BLOCK on an expired credential, or only track one?

Tracking sends an email; blocking refuses the assignment. Only one of those survives a licence lapsing on a Tuesday. Ask any vendor to demonstrate an assignment being refused because of an expiry date.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna checks every required credential against the end of the shift and refuses the assignment, with the reason written on the cell. It also screens against the federal OIG exclusion list, which physician-scheduling tools rarely touch.

03Do you carry nursing compliance, or only physicians?

Emergency-medicine tools are built for provider scheduling. A nursing organisation or a skilled-nursing facility carries a different surface: ratios against census and acuity, HPRD, and the quarterly CMS PBJ file.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna holds ratios with acuity and generates the CMS Payroll-Based Journal file from hours already captured. If your roster is physicians only, this criterion may not apply to you — say so.

04Can a single department actually buy it this month?

A sales process, a scoping call and an implementation are built for a buyer with a procurement function. A twelve-provider clinic usually is not that buyer.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna is self-serve: sign up, import your staff from a spreadsheet, and publish a real schedule this week. The live demo runs without an email address.

05What is the real first-year cost, setup included?

A monthly rate hides a one-time implementation. Get the setup fee in writing before you compare, or you are comparing half a number.

Where MedAligna lands: MedAligna has no setup fee and no implementation project: the price on the page is the price, per location, per month.

If you do move

01
Export staff and schedule
Two CSVs: your people, and your assignments. MedAligna maps roles, dates and shifts across, creating any missing shifts as it goes, and tells you which rows its rules would not accept.
02
Re-state the rules once
Coverage per shift, minimum rest, overtime caps, credential requirements, ratio rules. Presets exist for ACGME and common ratio regimes.
03
Run both for one period
Build next month in MedAligna while the current month runs where it is. Compare, then cut over. Nobody should switch a live roster in one step.

Where the fit is obvious

12-provider EM group

Wants automated generation this quarter, but a per-provider quote and a setup project put the timeline in the next fiscal year.

Self-serve trial, staff imported from a spreadsheet, next month's rota generated and reviewed in an afternoon — at a price read off the pricing page.

EM group adding a nursing unit

The physician scheduler handles the doctors, but the new unit needs ratios, acuity and credential blocking it was never built around.

One tool for both: providers and nurses on the same board, with the nursing compliance surface enforced rather than tracked.

Skilled-nursing facility

Needs HPRD held against census and the quarterly PBJ file, which an emergency-medicine tool does not produce.

PBJ generated from captured hours, DST-correct, with ratios and exclusion screening on every roster.

ShiftAdmin questions, answered

What does ShiftAdmin cost?: ShiftAdmin does not publish pricing, so we will not invent a number. MedAligna is $99, $149 or $249 per month per location, published in full with no quote form.
Does MedAligna auto-generate schedules too?: Yes. It generates against your coverage requirements, rules, preferences and fairness counters, and produces a draft you review cell by cell; it never publishes on its own.
Can we trial MedAligna without a sales call?: Yes. Fourteen days, every feature, no card, and nobody will phone you. You can also drive the live demo right now without signing up at all.
Is ShiftAdmin good for nursing, or only physicians?: Its heritage is physician and clinical scheduling, particularly emergency medicine, and that is where it is strongest. Nursing organisations tend to need ratio compliance with acuity, credential blocking, federal exclusion screening and, in skilled nursing, the CMS PBJ file, and those are not what it was built around.
Does ShiftAdmin do credential tracking?: Credential tracking and credential BLOCKING are different things, and the distinction is the one that matters. Ask any vendor to demonstrate an assignment being refused because of an expiry date. MedAligna checks every required credential against the end of the shift and refuses the assignment, with the reason written on the cell.
Can we import our ShiftAdmin schedule?: Yes: a CSV of your people and a CSV of your assignments. Roles, dates and shifts map across, and missing shifts are created as it goes. Set your rules once and the import checks every row against them, reporting what it refused instead of writing it in quietly.
What about home care or skilled nursing?: Neither is ShiftAdmin's territory. MedAligna schedules home-care visits with travel time between clients and caregiver continuity, and generates the quarterly CMS Payroll-Based Journal file for skilled-nursing facilities from hours already captured.
Is ShiftAdmin owned by QGenda?: Yes. The product is marketed as 'Shift Admin, a QGenda Company' (g2.com, as of July 2026), and it shares QGenda's enterprise, quote-on-request sales model. That is worth knowing if part of your reason for looking at ShiftAdmin was to avoid the enterprise buying process.
How much does ShiftAdmin cost per provider?: ShiftAdmin does not publish a per-provider rate, so we will not invent one. Third-party analyses estimate roughly $49,000 in the first year for a 10-provider group including a one-time implementation often cited above $20,000 (schedulingwiz.com, July 2026) — an unconfirmed estimate, not a ShiftAdmin quote. MedAligna is $99, $149 or $249 per location per month, published in full.
Does ShiftAdmin charge a setup fee?: Enterprise scheduling of this kind is typically sold with a one-time implementation, and third-party breakdowns cite a setup component above $20,000 for a small group (schedulingwiz.com, July 2026). Confirm the figure with ShiftAdmin directly. MedAligna has no setup fee and no implementation project.
What is the best ShiftAdmin alternative for nursing or skilled nursing?: One that treats clinical rules as enforcement: credential blocking, OIG exclusion screening, nurse-to-patient ratios with acuity, and the CMS PBJ file. That is the surface ShiftAdmin was not built around and the surface MedAligna is built on, at a flat per-location price with a self-serve trial.
Is ShiftAdmin a good product?: Yes, genuinely. Its automated generation is strong, it is well reviewed by emergency departments (softwareadvice.com, capterra.com), and it is a KLAS-recognised name. This page is not an argument that it is bad; it is an argument about who it is priced and sold for. If you are a health system, it is a serious choice.

Terms worth pinning down

The words that decide a scheduling purchase, defined plainly.

Shift Admin, a QGenda Company: ShiftAdmin's current market name. G2 lists the product as 'Shift Admin, a QGenda Company' as of July 2026; it sits inside QGenda's portfolio and shares that enterprise, quote-led sales model.
Credential blocking vs tracking: Tracking records a licence and its expiry and may notify you. Blocking refuses to schedule someone past that date. The difference is the whole point of a compliance tool, and it is worth a live demonstration from any vendor.
OIG exclusion screening: Checking staff against the federal List of Excluded Individuals and Entities. Assigning an excluded person to a shift that bills federal healthcare programmes carries civil monetary penalties, so the check belongs on the roster, not in a separate spreadsheet.
Per-provider vs per-location pricing: Per-provider pricing scales with headcount, so every hire moves the bill. Per-location pricing is flat per site regardless of how many people you roster — a number you can still say out loud a year from now.
CMS PBJ: The Payroll-Based Journal: the staffing-hours file skilled-nursing facilities submit to CMS quarterly. It must reconcile to hours actually worked, which is why it belongs to the scheduler that captured them.