For hospitalist group leads and site directors
Hospitalist scheduling software with a price you can read today
Hospitalist scheduling software builds the block schedule for an inpatient physician group: a seven-on/seven-off cycle or a variant of it, a nocturnist line, and a swing shift over the admitting peak. Because a hospitalist group works inside a hospital it usually does not own, the schedule hangs off a service with its own facility label and timezone rather than off a building the group operates.
From $99/month per location · No sales call · No card to start
At a glance
- Hospitalist scheduling software builds the block schedule for an inpatient physician group: seven-on/seven-off or a variant, a nocturnist line, and a swing shift over the admitting peak.
- The pattern is a cycle, not a roster. Seven days on and seven off is built once as a repeating cycle and enrolled onto, so next year's blocks are generated rather than retyped.
- A hospitalist group works in a hospital it does not own, so the schedule has to hang off a service with its own facility label and timezone rather than a building you operate.
- Nights are the argument. An equity count of nights, weekends and holidays that the physicians themselves can see settles it; a report only the scheduler can run does not.
- $99–$249 per location per month, published, with a 14-day trial and no sales call — which is the whole reason a group of eight can buy this and cannot buy the enterprise alternatives.
What does hospitalist scheduling software cost?
Nobody in this category publishes a price, which is a problem specific to small groups: you cannot compare three products in an afternoon when two of the numbers require a meeting.
MedAligna is $99, $149 or $249 per location per month, on the pricing page, with a 14-day trial that needs no card and no call. That is the whole answer, and it is the reason a group of eight can buy this: there is no discovery call, no annual commitment and no implementation project to get through before the first schedule is published.
The enterprise tools in hospitalist scheduling are genuinely capable and are sold the enterprise way — quoted per organisation after a discovery call, usually annually, varying by provider count and modules. For a health system with a procurement function that is a reasonable process. For a group that wants to know the number before Thursday, it is the reason the category feels closed.
Can it do seven-on/seven-off?
It is the defining hospitalist pattern, and a fourteen-day cycle is exactly what a scheduler that thinks in weeks cannot hold.
A rotation here is a repeating cycle of on and off days that you build by clicking days on and off, so seven-on/seven-off is seven clicked on and seven clicked off. Physicians are enrolled onto the cycle with a start date each, which is what staggers the group across it, and the generator writes real shifts into the calendar. Re-running it skips anything that already exists rather than doubling it, so adding a new hire in March does not mean rebuilding the year.
A nocturnist is a service of its own rather than a flag on a person, and a swing shift over the admitting peak is simply another shift on the same day — so the overlap the group actually works is the overlap the schedule shows. Hours are computed on elapsed time rather than by subtracting clock readings, which is why a night that crosses the daylight-saving boundary is thirteen hours in the record and not twelve.
How do you settle the argument about nights?
In a group without a nocturnist, nights are the recurring argument, and it is never settled by discussion because everybody is remembering their own year accurately.
By a count the physicians can see themselves. Nights, weekends, holidays and call blocks are counted per person over any trailing window, and the report is open to the group rather than to the scheduler alone. An equity number only ends an argument if the people arguing can check it; one that only the scheduler can run is a number nobody believes.
Holidays carry a memory of who worked the last occurrence, which is the specific fact three people will each recall differently. Swaps are rule-checked before they are offered, so a lead approving a trade is not quietly creating a stretch that breaks the group's own limits.
When does a block schedule actually break?
Building next year's blocks
The seven-on/seven-off grid is a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds every December, shifting each column by a week and hoping the formula held. Nobody else in the group can safely touch it.
The cycle is defined once — seven days on, seven off — and physicians are enrolled onto it with a start date each. The generator writes the real shifts, and re-running it skips what already exists rather than doubling it.
The nocturnist quits
Nights were one person's job. Now they have to be shared across eight people who each remember their own recent nights differently, and the schedule is rebuilt from that argument.
Nights are counted per physician over any trailing window, and the count is open to the group rather than to the scheduler alone. The rebuild starts from a number everybody can see.
Rounding at two hospitals
The group covers the community hospital and a second site forty minutes away, on different schedules in different formats, and neither building belongs to the group.
Each is a service with its own facility label and timezone, scheduled independently of whether you operate the site. One roster for the group, one calendar per physician.
How to choose hospitalist scheduling software
Five questions worth asking any vendor in this category, us included. One of them is a straight no from us, and it is left in because a checklist its author wins ten-nil is a brochure.
01Is the price published?
This is the question the category is worst at, and for a group of eight it is decisive. Every enterprise vendor in hospitalist scheduling quotes after a discovery call, which means you cannot compare three products in an afternoon — and the smallest groups are the ones least likely to get called back at all.
Where MedAligna lands: $99, $149 or $249 per location per month, on the pricing page, with a 14-day trial that needs no card and no call.
02Can it express a seven-on/seven-off cycle?
It is the defining hospitalist pattern and a surprising number of general-purpose schedulers cannot hold it, because they think in weeks and the cycle is fourteen days long.
Where MedAligna lands: Yes — a rotation is a repeating cycle of on and off days that you build by clicking days on and off, so seven and seven is seven clicked on and seven clicked off. Presets exist for the common industrial patterns; the hospitalist cycle is the custom one.
03Can it schedule a hospital you do not own?
A hospitalist group's work happens inside somebody else's building. A tool that insists every shift belongs to a site you operate makes you invent fictional locations to represent hospitals you merely round at.
Where MedAligna lands: A service carries its own facility label and its own timezone, and the timezone on the service is what the hours are computed against — which matters the moment a group covers call in another zone.
04Does it do census-based staffing?
Hospitalist staffing is genuinely census-driven: the number of physicians you need tomorrow depends on how many patients are on the service tonight, and a fixed grid cannot express that.
Where MedAligna lands: No, and this is the honest gap in the list. The schedule is built from a cycle and edited by hand when the census moves; there is no automatic census-to-staffing link, and the free acuity calculator on this site is a planning tool rather than something wired into the rota.
05Does the on-call answer work without a login?
The person who needs the hospitalist at 2am is a nurse on a ward or an outside physician, and neither is going to install an app.
Where MedAligna lands: A revocable public link shows the current on-call with second and backup published in order. No account, and not indexed by search engines.
What is a nocturnist, a swing shift, or seven-on/seven-off?
- Seven-on/seven-off
- The commonest hospitalist block: seven consecutive days worked, then seven off, repeating on a fourteen-day cycle. It trades long stretches on service for whole weeks away, and it is why hospitalist scheduling is a cycle problem rather than a weekly-roster problem.
- Nocturnist
- A hospitalist who works nights as their substantive role rather than by rotation. A group with a nocturnist has largely removed the night argument; a group without one shares nights across everybody, which is where equity counting starts to matter.
- Swing shift
- A shift placed over the late-afternoon and evening admitting peak, overlapping the day team and the night cover. It exists because admissions do not arrive evenly across twenty-four hours.
- Census
- The number of patients on the service at a given moment. Hospitalist staffing is driven by it, which is what separates this from a fixed-coverage rota: the work tomorrow depends on who is still admitted tonight.
- Service
- A body of work scheduled independently of a building — 'Hospitalist rounding, St. Mary's'. It carries its own facility label and timezone, so a group can schedule work inside a hospital it does not operate.
Questions people actually ask
- How much does hospitalist scheduling software cost?
- MedAligna publishes it: $99, $149 or $249 per location per month, with a 14-day trial that needs no card and no sales call. The enterprise platforms in this category quote per organisation after a discovery call, typically as an annual contract varying by provider count and modules, which is why a small group often cannot get a number at all.
- Can it build a seven-on/seven-off block schedule?
- Yes. A rotation is a repeating cycle of on and off days built by clicking days on and off, so seven-on/seven-off is seven on and seven off, and physicians are enrolled onto it with a start date each so the group staggers across the cycle. The generator writes the real shifts, and re-running it skips what already exists rather than duplicating it.
- Does it handle a nocturnist and a swing shift?
- Yes. A nocturnist line is a service of its own rather than a flag on a person, and a swing shift over the admitting peak is another shift on the same day, so the overlap the group works is the overlap the schedule shows. Night hours are computed as real elapsed time, so a shift crossing the daylight-saving boundary is recorded at thirteen hours rather than twelve.
- Does it do census-based staffing?
- No. Hospitalist staffing really is census-driven, and this is the honest gap: the schedule is built from a cycle and edited by hand when the census moves. There is no automatic link from census to staffing level. The acuity calculator on this site is a planning tool and is not wired into the rota.
- Can it schedule a hospital the group does not own?
- Yes, and this is the distinction that matters most for a hospitalist group. Work hangs off a service, which carries its own facility label and its own timezone, so you are not inventing fictional locations to represent hospitals you round at. The timezone on the service is what hours are computed against, which is what keeps a schedule honest when a group covers a site in another zone.
- How does the 2am call get answered?
- A revocable public link shows the current on-call with second and backup published in order. It needs no account and is not indexed by search engines, so the ward nurse or the outside physician reads the current answer rather than last month's list, and you can rotate the token whenever you like.
- Does it export to payroll, and can physicians subscribe to their own calendar?
- Captured hours export as a timesheet CSV, and Gusto's import matches the columns itself. Each physician also gets a calendar feed they can subscribe to in whatever app they already use, so the block schedule sits beside the rest of their life, and there is a read API for the roster and the current on-call. We capture and export hours; we are not a payroll processor and never calculate net pay, withhold tax or move money.
- Who sets it up, and what does support look like?
- A group lead does it: import the physicians from a CSV, name the services, build the cycle, publish. There is no implementation project and nobody has to be scheduled for a call before you can use the product — the 14-day trial starts without a card. Support is email, from the people who build it, and the help centre documents each screen. For a group of eight this is an afternoon, not a quarter.
- Is hospitalist scheduling software HIPAA compliant?
- Ask any vendor in this category for a Business Associate Agreement and read what comes back — that is the real question, and it belongs on a call rather than on a marketing page. It is worth knowing that a block schedule may not need one. MedAligna schedules staff, not patients. We hold employee records — names, licenses, shifts, hours worked — which are not protected health information under HIPAA, even when the employer is a hospital. No patient names, no diagnoses, no charts, no notes. A breach of MedAligna could not expose your patients, because their data was never in it.
Related
Publish next block this afternoon
Seven-on/seven-off as a cycle, nights counted in the open, and a price on the page. 14-day trial, no card.