For physician groups and departments
Physician scheduling software that settles the call equity argument
Physician scheduling software builds call, clinic and block schedules for a medical group, often across facilities the group does not own. Beyond a calendar, it tracks who has carried which nights, weekends and holidays, runs escalation chains, and publishes a who's-on-call board that anyone can check without an account.
From $99/month per location · No sales call · No card to start
At a glance
- Physician scheduling software builds call, clinic and block schedules for a medical group, usually across facilities the group does not own.
- The recurring argument in every group is call equity. It is settled by a count that everyone can see, not by anyone's memory of last November.
- A service ('Cardiology call, St. Mary's') is schedulable without being a site you operate, with its own facility label and timezone.
- Escalation chains (first, second, backup) are published in order, so the 2am pager question is answered by a public board, without a login.
- $99–$249 per location per month, published, 14-day trial, and no sales process. A department chair can publish next quarter's call without raising a requisition.
How is on-call equity measured?
Call equity, counted rather than argued about. Every group has the same recurring conversation, and it is never settled by anyone's memory of last November.
MedAligna counts every night, weekend, holiday and on-call block each physician has carried, over any trailing window you choose, and shows it to everyone. Holidays are a first-class object, including who worked the last occurrence, because Christmas is the single most emotionally charged fairness problem in medical scheduling and it is not solved by a spreadsheet nobody trusts.
The equity report is visible to the physicians themselves, not only to the scheduler. That sounds like a small thing. It is the difference between a scheduler defending her decisions in a meeting and a group looking at the same numbers.
Can a group schedule call at hospitals it does not own?
Call at hospitals you do not own. A physician group's schedule is not a building; it is a set of services, cardiology call at St. Mary's, rounding at the county hospital, clinic on Tuesdays, spread across facilities that belong to other people.
It can, because MedAligna schedules services, not just units. A service has a name, a facility label, and its own timezone; it is schedulable without being somewhere you operate. Which means a group covering three hospitals and two clinics sees one roster, and a physician sees one calendar rather than three.
Escalation chains sit on top: first call, second call, backup. When the pager question arrives at two in the morning, the answer is a page on a public board with a link anyone can open: no login, no app, no phoning the switchboard to ask who is covering.
What does physician scheduling software cost?
Priced like software, not like a hospital contract. QGenda, Lightning Bolt and Amion all schedule physicians: two of them will send you a sales process, and the third was built when pagers were the state of the art.
MedAligna is self-serve and published-price: ninety-nine to two hundred and forty-nine dollars per location per month, a fourteen-day trial, and nobody calls you. A department chair with a card can have next quarter's call schedule built and published without raising a requisition, which is the entire point.
If you are on Amion today, you already know what you are missing: the rules. MedAligna checks credentials, rest and duty hours as the schedule is built, and a change publishes to everyone's phone instantly instead of being retyped.
Which arguments does a physician schedule actually settle?
The holiday conversation
Christmas call is being assigned. Three physicians each remember, sincerely, that they worked it last year. The scheduler has no record and no way to settle it.
Holidays are first-class objects with a memory of who worked the last occurrence. The rota is balanced against the record, and the record is visible to the group.
Call at three hospitals
The group covers cardiology call at St. Mary's, rounds at the county hospital, and clinic on Tuesdays. Three schedules, three formats, and a physician who has to reconcile them himself.
Services are scheduled independently of whether you own the building. One roster for the group, one calendar per physician, each service carrying its own timezone.
2am, nobody answers
The on-call physician's phone is on silent. The caller does not know who second call is, and the switchboard has last month's list.
The public board always shows the current answer, with second call and backup published in order beside it. The caller tries the next name from the page they are already looking at, not from last month's list.
How to choose physician 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.
01Can it schedule services, not just locations?
A physician group's work is not a building. If the tool insists every shift belongs to a site you operate, you will end up maintaining fictional locations to represent hospitals you merely visit.
Where MedAligna lands: A service has a name, a facility label and its own timezone, and is schedulable without being somewhere you operate.
02Can physicians see how their share compares?
An equity count only ends the argument if the people arguing can see it. A report only the scheduler can run is a report nobody believes, and the physician who thinks he carries more than his share will go on thinking it.
Where MedAligna lands: Yes. The equity report is visible to the physicians themselves, not only to the scheduler: each one's count of nights, weekends, holidays and call blocks against the rest of the group, over any trailing window, including holiday memory.
03Does the on-call board work without an account?
The person who needs the on-call physician at 2am is not going to install an app or ask you for a password.
Where MedAligna lands: A revocable public link. No login, no indexing by search engines, and you can rotate the token whenever you like.
04Does it enforce duty hours if you have residents?
ACGME limits are averaged over four weeks. A tool with a flat weekly cap will both reject compliant schedules and pass non-compliant blocks, the second of which is a finding.
Where MedAligna lands: Averaging windows are modelled directly, so eighty hours over four weeks is expressed as it is actually written.
05How much does it cost, and can you find out today?
In this category, most vendors will not tell you. That is a choice, and it has a cost: you cannot compare three products on a Thursday afternoon if one of the numbers requires a meeting.
Where MedAligna lands: $99, $149 or $249 per location per month, on the pricing page, with a 14-day trial and no card.
06Do you need deep enterprise HR integration?
If you are part of a large system with a workforce platform, the integration surface may matter more than the scheduling engine. Be honest with yourself about which problem you are actually solving.
Where MedAligna lands: We export hours to major payroll systems and offer an API on Enterprise, but we do not have deep enterprise HR integrations. If that is your requirement, an enterprise platform is the better fit and we will say so.
What is call equity, a service, or holiday memory?
- Call equity
- The fair distribution of nights, weekends, holidays and on-call blocks across a group. Requires a count over a defined window, and, critically, a count the group can see.
- Block scheduling
- Assigning physicians to fixed blocks of clinical activity (clinic, theatre, call, admin) rather than individual shifts, typically over a rotation cycle.
- Escalation chain
- The ordered list of who is called if the first person does not respond: first call, second call, backup. A rotation that names only one person has a single point of failure.
- Service
- A schedulable clinical function ('Cardiology call, St. Mary's'), which may exist at a facility the group does not own. Distinct from a location.
- Who's-on-call board
- A published view of current on-call coverage, reachable by people who do not have accounts. The original problem Amion solved, and the one many modern tools forgot.
- Holiday memory
- A record of who worked the last occurrence of each holiday, used to balance the next one. Without it, holiday fairness is decided by whoever complains most convincingly.
Questions people actually ask
- What is physician scheduling software?
- Physician scheduling software builds call, clinic and block schedules for a medical group, tracks the fair distribution of nights, weekends and holidays, runs escalation chains for on-call coverage, and publishes who is on call to the people who need to know, including at facilities the group does not own.
- Can it schedule across multiple hospitals?
- Yes. A service ('Cardiology call, St. Mary's') is schedulable without being a site you operate, with its own facility label and timezone. A group covering several hospitals and clinics sees one roster and each physician sees one calendar.
- How does it handle call equity?
- Nights, weekends, holidays and on-call blocks are counted per physician over any trailing window, including who worked the last occurrence of each holiday. The report is visible to the physicians, not only the scheduler, which is what actually ends the argument.
- Is there a who's-on-call board?
- Yes, on a revocable public link that needs no login. It is the Amion use case, done properly: the answer to the two-in-the-morning pager question, with an escalation chain behind it.
- How is this different from QGenda or Amion?
- On rule depth, comparable. On everything else, not: MedAligna is self-serve with published pricing, a 14-day trial, and no sales process. A department can sign up on a Tuesday and publish a schedule the same Tuesday.
- What is actually involved in setting up a call schedule?
- Four things, and a group does all of them itself. Import the physicians from a CSV; name the services you cover, including the ones at hospitals you do not own; set the escalation order for each; then either build the block by hand or let it generate and adjust. Most groups are publishing the same afternoon. There is no implementation project and no sales call to get through first: the 14-day trial is the whole product, and pricing starts at $99 per location per month. If the group already has a rota somewhere, import it and compare rather than starting from an empty grid.
Related
Settle the call rota with numbers
Equity everyone can see, escalation chains that work, and a public on-call board. No sales call, no contract.