On-call scheduling · Clinics and hospitals
On-call scheduling software that builds the call schedule in seconds.
The call schedule is the worst spreadsheet your team owns: fairness on nights and weekends, everyone's constraints, last-minute swaps. Synchro generates the schedule automatically by equalizing the criteria your team has chosen, keeps the counters visible to the whole team, and lets shift transfers resolve themselves self-serve.
Quick verdict
- If you are responsible for a call schedule, in a clinic, a family medicine group or a hospital department, Synchro replaces manual building with generation that follows your rules and your fairness criteria.
- An equal shift count does not mean an equal load. Twelve shifts can include three weekends and holidays for one physician and none for another, and that gap is what starts the arguments.
- Most of the work lands after publication. Transfers resolve on an internal board and the fairness counters follow automatically.
- No patient data in the platform. Physician schedules only, in an interface available in English and in French.
What on-call scheduling software has to do
Building a call schedule by hand means constantly arbitrating between three demands that contradict each other: cover every shift, respect everyone's constraints, and stay fair over the months. Synchro does that arbitration for you:
- Fairness by your criteria. Your team chooses what must be equal (weekends, nights, statutory holidays) and Synchro equalizes each of those criteria while generating the schedule. No imposed formula, no points system.
- Fairness you can show. Everyone's running total, criterion by criterion, is visible to the team. A physician who feels shortchanged looks up the number instead of going to see the manager.
- Natural-language constraints. Each physician writes their unavailabilities the way they would say them, then confirms the meaning was captured correctly. No endless forms.
- Self-serve shift transfers. Something comes up? The shift is posted on an internal board and claimed by an eligible colleague. No more phone cascade on a Sunday night.
- Changes that propagate. An accepted transfer updates everyone's schedule and the fairness counters at the same time. That is what stops two versions from circulating in parallel.
Twelve shifts each, two different loads
Teams count call shifts because it is the easiest number to produce. It hides exactly what starts the arguments, which is the dates those shifts landed on. Take two physicians with exactly twelve shifts each over the year.
| Physician | Weekdays | Weekend days | Holidays | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physician A | 9 | 2 | 1 | 12 |
| Physician B | 12 | 0 | 0 | 12 |
The raw count is identical, and yet physician A gave up two weekend days and a statutory holiday while physician B gave up none. A spreadsheet showing a "number of shifts" column presents these two people as treated the same. If your team has decided that weekends and holidays must be equal, those are the two columns the software equalizes, and the gap disappears. That choice is one of the few scheduling constraints a family medicine group writes for itself rather than inherits, as our inventory of the 27 real constraints in an FMG schedule sets out.
Why not a points total? Because it lets shift types trade against each other. Testing an optimization model on a twelve-physician rotation, we got a distribution that was perfectly balanced in points where one physician carried four shifts and another carried one, because four weekday shifts were worth as much as two shifts touching a weekend. Equalizing each criterion separately avoids that trap, and avoids the debate about what a Saturday is worth. The full model and the code are in our article on medical scheduling as an operations research problem.
What breaks after publication
The scientific literature treats building a schedule and repairing it after publication as two distinct problems. The review by Erhard and colleagues, published in the European Journal of Operational Research in 2018, separates staffing, schedule construction and rescheduling, and it is the third one teams underestimate. Of the eight moments that wreck an FMG schedule, six happen once the period is published.
Call is the textbook case. A Friday-afternoon withdrawal is not fixed by rerunning a full generation, which would move assignments the team had already accepted. It is fixed by opening the shift to eligible colleagues, recording who picked it up and when, and letting the fairness counters absorb the transfer.
In our pilot FMG in Saint-Hyacinthe, about thirty people managed in a spreadsheet took roughly 30 management hours a month, corrections after publication included, and about one hour with the tool. Each physician went from more than 12 hours a year to about ten minutes to enter their schedule. Those are our own measurements, not a network average.
The call rules your team does not write
Part of the call schedule is decided elsewhere, which is what makes it hard to pin down. In Quebec, a family physician with under fifteen years of practice commits to twelve hours a week of particular medical activities (AMP) or the equivalent, per the FMOQ practical guide, and failing that agreement cuts 30 % from all of their RAMQ billing. Which activities qualify is set by the regional department of family medicine, not by the group.
The practical consequence: the hospital call calendar and the AMP list often arrive after the FMG schedule is published and appointments are booked. The group does not control those dates, only how fast it catches its own up. On the FMG side, the health ministry's funding and professional support program requires the service offer to be spread across all opening hours, evenings and weekends included, which guarantees that the unpopular blocks will exist and will have to be shared.
Who it is for
- Hospital departments. Emergency, obstetrics, pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery and other specialties. Free during the hospital beta.
- Family medicine groups. Call coverage integrates with the rest of the schedule: walk-in distribution, shared offices, team calendar. See the FMG scheduling software.
- Medical clinics. Any team that rotates call between physicians, including when the rotation lives alongside an office schedule.
No patient data in the on-call schedule
Synchro schedules physicians, not patients. The platform holds no patient data: a call schedule says who is on call, never who is being treated. For your organization, that means a far simpler security review than for an EMR or a patient booking tool.
What Synchro does not do
The platform does not replace your EMR and does not transmit anything to the provincial orchestrator on your behalf. It does not produce your AMP list, does not negotiate your agreement with the regional department of family medicine, and does not calculate your attendance rate. On call, it works on distribution, fairness by your criteria, visibility of the running total and pickup of released shifts, and leaves the rest to the group and its partners.
What it costs
For clinics and family medicine groups: $10 CAD per user per month billed annually ($15 CAD month-to-month), first month free, every feature included. For hospital departments, Synchro is free during the entire hospital beta. Details are on the Pricing page, and our comparisons place Synchro against the other tools used in Quebec.
How to start with your on-call schedule
- Choose your fairness criteria. What must be equal in your team: weekends, nights, statutory holidays, total shifts. It is the only decision that needs a real discussion, and it gets made once a year.
- Pull last year's running total. Count each criterion over what has already been done. The gap you find is the starting point for the next period.
- Have physicians enter their own constraints. Each person writes theirs in their account, or the person responsible does it for the team.
- Generate a real period and compare it to the one you would have built by hand. That is the only test worth anything.
Going further
Frequently asked questions about on-call scheduling software
What is on-call scheduling software?
On-call scheduling software assigns physicians to call shifts while respecting each person's constraints and equalizing, over the year, the fairness criteria the team has chosen: weekends, nights, statutory holidays. It replaces the Excel file for building the schedule, and the phone-call cascade for replacements. Both halves matter equally: in a family medicine group, most of the scheduling work lands after publication, not before.
Is there software that automatically ensures fair physician shift distribution?
Yes. The team chooses once what must be equal between physicians, for example the number of weekends, nights and statutory holidays, and Synchro equalizes each of those criteria separately while generating the schedule. There is no points system: a weekend never trades against four weekday calls, and nobody has to agree on what a Saturday is worth. Two physicians with twelve shifts each can have three weekends and holidays for one and none for the other. That gap is what a raw count hides. See fair shift distribution.
Which teams does Synchro work for?
Synchro covers family medicine groups, medical clinics and hospital departments: the emergency department, obstetrics, pediatrics, internal medicine, gynecology, surgery, infectious diseases and other specialties. The distribution logic follows each team's own rules, including its fairness criteria and its rest rules after a night shift.
Is Synchro available in English?
Yes. The interface is available in English and in French, and each user picks their own language. Synchro was built in Quebec for Quebec teams, so the French terminology is the native one (GMF, AMP, RAMQ slots), and our team answers in either language.
How do physicians submit their constraints?
Each physician writes their unavailabilities and preferences in plain language, the way they would say them: "no call on Wednesday evenings, I do office work on Thursdays, never two weekends in a row". Synchro converts them into structured constraints, the physician confirms the meaning was captured correctly, and the distribution honours them. No 40-field form to fill in.
What happens when a physician has to give up a shift at the last minute?
The shift is posted on the internal transfer board, eligible colleagues are notified, and the first to accept takes it. The schedule updates for everyone and the fairness counters follow the transfer. The person responsible sees the change without making a single phone call. See on-call shift transfer.
Does Synchro store any patient data?
No. Synchro schedules physicians, not patients. No patient data enters the platform: a call schedule says who is on call, never who is being treated. That makes the security review by your organization much simpler.
How much does Synchro cost?
For clinics and family medicine groups: $10 CAD per user per month billed annually ($15 CAD month-to-month), first month free, every feature included. For hospital departments: free during the entire hospital beta. Details are on the Pricing page.
Public sources cited: the MSSS funding and professional support program for family medicine groups, for spreading the service offer across opening hours; the FMOQ practical guide, for particular medical activities and the billing reduction that follows a failure to meet the agreement; M. Erhard, J. Schoenfelder, A. Fügener and J. O. Brunner, "State of the art in physician scheduling", European Journal of Operational Research, 2018, for the distinction between construction and rescheduling. The management hours cited come from our pilot FMG in Saint-Hyacinthe and the optimization model's behaviour from our own testing, reported as such and not as network averages. The table is an example, each team chooses its own criteria.
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