Abstract Objective We present a set of definitions and a conceptual model to support primary and consulting physician schedule integration into the electronic health record (EHR) in an inpatient setting and show how utilization of this functionality supports patient-centered communication. Materials and Methods Our institution transitioned to the Epic EHR and implemented modules to connect primary and consulting provider schedules from external scheduling systems to secure messaging within an inpatient EHR context. We evaluated legacy functionality, met with provider groups to map their shifts to hospital teams, built a crosswalk tool to extract, transform, and load data from the scheduling systems to the EHR, evaluated the utilization, and assessed issues related to the implementation. We used our experience from the project to develop a set of definitions and a conceptual model for provider scheduling. Results We met with over 100 groups to map over 2000 shifts to nearly 700 teams across 15 facilities in our health system. Utilization was high with an average of 6500 on-call provider searches per day in the 30 days following implementation. The conceptual model for inpatient provider scheduling defines 11 terms. Discussion Our definitions and conceptual model sufficiently represent the inpatient provider scheduling domain as evidenced by high initial utilization and few reported defects. The standardized terminology for provider scheduling aids integration of scheduling data into the EHR. Conclusion Our successful integration of real-time scheduling data within the EHR guided development of a provider scheduling conceptual model. Standardized provider scheduling terminology promotes interoperability of scheduling systems.
Hill et al. (Sat,) studied this question.