For practice managers
Clinic staff scheduling software you can publish between patients
Clinic staff scheduling software builds the rota for a medical practice (providers, nurses, medical assistants and front desk) across one site or several. It tracks licences and certifications, respects part-time contracts, and lets staff swap shifts and request time off without the practice manager becoming a switchboard.
From $99/month per location · No sales call · No card to start
At a glance
- Clinic staff scheduling software builds the rota for a medical practice (providers, nurses, medical assistants and front desk) across one site or several.
- It is not patient appointment booking. That is a practice-management or EHR product; the two are unfortunately both called 'medical scheduling software'.
- It should respect part-time contracts: a nurse contracted for 24 hours hits overtime at hour 25, not at the practice's 40th.
- Setup is an afternoon: import staff from a spreadsheet, set rules once, publish. No implementation project, no consultant.
- $99/month for one location and up to 30 staff, with a 14-day trial and no card.
Who sets up the rota when the practice has no IT department?
The practice manager is the whole IT department. There is no implementation team here: there is one person who also runs the front desk, orders the supplies, and is currently being asked about next month's rota.
She does, which is why MedAligna has no implementation project. Import your staff from a spreadsheet (paste it straight in if that is easier), set your coverage and rules once, pick a rotation or build the week by hand, and publish. Most practices do the whole thing in an afternoon, and nobody has to sit through a demo first.
Publishing replaces the group email. The moment a schedule goes up, the current version is what every member of staff sees in the app, so 'is the new rota out?' stops being a question the manager answers eleven times.
Does it handle part-time and per-diem contracts?
Part-time contracts, honoured properly. A clinic runs on people who work three days, or two half-days, or every other Friday, and a tool that only understands full-time is a tool that quietly manufactures overtime.
It does, by checking hours against the tighter of two limits: the organisation's cap, and the individual's own contract. A nurse contracted for twenty-four hours a week gets an overtime warning at her twenty-fifth hour, not at the practice's fortieth, which is the number that actually costs you money and the one that most schedulers miss entirely.
Availability is hers to state, and time-off requests carry a balance she can see before she asks. Requests that collide with an already-published shift are surfaced to you with a one-click way to unassign and post the gap as an open shift.
What happens when the practice grows to a second site?
Growing to more than one site. The second location is where most clinic scheduling tools quietly fall over, because they were built around a single rota.
MedAligna is multi-location from the first day: sites, departments, and staff who float between them. An open shift at the second clinic can be offered to eligible people at the first, and MedAligna will suggest that before it ever suggests an agency. Three or more locations get twenty per cent off.
Each location carries its own timezone, which matters more than it sounds: a chain with sites in Phoenix and New York cannot share one clock, and a scheduler who has to do that arithmetic in her head will eventually get it wrong.
Which Tuesdays does a clinic rota actually change?
The practice manager's Tuesday
She is covering the front desk, chasing a supplier, and being asked about next month's rota by three people. The schedule lives in a spreadsheet that only she understands.
Import, set the rules once, publish. Staff get it on their phones, and the eleven people who would have asked her about it do not have to.
The 0.6 FTE nurse
She is contracted for twenty-four hours a week. The scheduler, working to the practice's forty-hour cap, books her for thirty-two without noticing.
The overtime warning fires at hour twenty-five: against her contract, not the practice's ceiling. Which is the number that actually costs money.
The second location
The practice opens a second site. The spreadsheet forks. Staff who work across both are now two separate rows in two separate files.
Multi-location from the first day: one staff directory, shifts at either site, and an open shift at one clinic offered to eligible staff at the other before an agency is ever suggested.
How to choose clinic scheduling software
Eight questions worth asking any vendor in this category, including us. At least one of them is a question we do not answer well, and we have said so rather than leaving it out.
01Is this staff scheduling or patient scheduling?
The most common and most expensive mix-up in this category. Both are called 'medical scheduling software'. One builds your rota; the other books appointments. They are entirely different products.
Where MedAligna lands: Staff. MedAligna schedules who works Tuesday night. It does not book patients. If you need appointment booking, you want a practice-management or EHR system, and we will happily tell you so.
02Who does the setup, and how long does it take?
For a practice with no IT department, an implementation project is not a cost; it is a blocker. If the answer involves a kick-off call, a consultant, or a named person from the vendor who has to be scheduled, it is not built for you: it is built for someone with a project manager.
Where MedAligna lands: You do, in an afternoon. Import from a CSV, set the rules, publish. Nobody calls you, there is nothing to install, and the $99 tier is self-serve from the first click: you can drive the entire product on the trial without speaking to us at all.
03Does it handle part-time and per-diem properly?
Clinics run on people who work three days, two half-days, or every other Friday. A tool that only understands full-time quietly manufactures overtime.
Where MedAligna lands: Individual contracted hours are checked alongside the practice's cap, and the tighter of the two wins.
04Can staff swap and request time off without going through you?
If every change routes through the practice manager, the software has moved the work rather than removed it.
Where MedAligna lands: Swaps are rule-checked before they are offered, time-off requests carry a visible balance, and you can auto-approve the swaps where every rule passes.
05What happens when you grow?
Most small-practice tools are built around a single rota, and the second location is where they fall over.
Where MedAligna lands: Multi-location from day one, with staff who float between sites and a 20% discount from three locations.
06Do you need clinical rule depth at all?
A four-person practice with no credential expiry problem and no ratio requirements may genuinely be better served by a cheap general scheduler. It is worth asking honestly.
Where MedAligna lands: If you have no licences to track, no ratios, and no compliance exposure, a general-purpose tool may be the right answer and it will cost you less. The moment you have a lapsing licence on a rota, it is not.
What is an FTE, a per diem, or a coverage requirement?
- Staff scheduling vs patient scheduling
- Staff scheduling builds the working rota (who is on Tuesday). Patient scheduling books appointments (who is seen on Tuesday). Both are called 'medical scheduling software' and they are entirely different products.
- FTE
- Full-time equivalent. A 0.6 FTE nurse is contracted for 60% of full-time hours, and her overtime threshold is her contract, not the practice's ceiling.
- Per diem
- Staff who work on a shift-by-shift basis rather than to a contracted schedule. Cheaper than agency, more flexible than a fixed rota, and invisible to most scheduling tools.
- Coverage requirement
- How many people of which role a given shift needs. The thing a rota is actually built against, and the number that determines whether a day is short.
- Publish
- The act of making a draft schedule visible to staff. After a good publish there is exactly one current version and everyone is looking at it; a bad one emails a PDF that is stale by Friday.
Questions people actually ask
- What is clinic staff scheduling software?
- Clinic staff scheduling software builds the working rota for a medical practice (providers, nurses, medical assistants, front desk) across one or more sites. It tracks credentials and expiry, respects part-time contracts, handles swaps and time-off requests, and publishes to staff phones.
- Is this for patient appointments?
- No. MedAligna schedules your STAFF (which nurse works Tuesday), not your patients. If you need appointment booking, that is a practice-management or EHR product. Both are unfortunately called 'medical scheduling software', which is the most common mix-up in this category.
- How long does setup take for a small practice?
- An afternoon, and the practice manager does it herself. Import staff from a CSV, set coverage and rules once, publish. No implementation project, no consultant, no kick-off call, and nothing installed on a machine anyone has to maintain. The 14-day trial is the full product at the $99 tier, so the rota you build while evaluating is the rota you keep.
- Can it handle part-time and per-diem staff?
- Yes, and it checks hours against the individual's own contract as well as the practice's cap, so a 24-hour-a-week nurse gets her overtime warning at hour 25, not at the practice's hour 41.
- What does it cost for a small practice?
- $99 per month for one location with up to 30 staff, including credential tracking, swaps, open shifts, on-call and the staff mobile app. Fourteen-day free trial, no card required.
Related
Have next month's rota done by lunch
Import your staff, pick a rotation, publish. No demo, no contract, nobody calling you.