Case Study: Vancouver Coastal Health simplifies complex physician scheduling and reduces scheduling time by 75% with PetalMD

How to Simplify Physician Scheduling in Complex Hospital Settings

Vancouver Coastal Health faced highly complex cardiology scheduling across four hospitals (66 cardiologists, 49 shift types, 10 shifts requiring 24/7 coverage and 100+ stakeholders). Manual planning and shift swaps were time-consuming, error-prone and threatened continuity as experienced schedulers prepared to retire. To address this, Vancouver Coastal Health selected PetalMD’s Petal Scheduling solution.

PetalMD implemented automated planning, real‑time schedule updates, physician-driven shift swaps, equity reporting and secure messaging. The tool cut scheduling time by about 75%, centralized absence requests and reduced communication errors; over a three‑month period the department processed 690 shift swaps, 180 absence requests and 300 secure messages, ensuring fairer shift distribution and more reliable coverage.

Vancouver Coastal Health

Faisal Aziz

Regional Cardiac Program Leader