Community Health Systems

Melissa Harder

Having worked in the medical scheduling field for over seven years with an additional five years in smaller doctors’ offices, I can tell you that medical scheduling is not for the weak, especially when it involves the hospital’s emergency room, intensive care and hospitalist staff. Many people may not know what goes on behind the scenes to ensure your local emergency room is staffed and staffed correctly. Recruiting, credentialing & scheduling all need to align for this to happen. Thus, not to be confused with the nurse staffing, I can only speak of physicians & mid-levels.

Over the years, I have made many lifetime friends with a lot of the providers, who have followed me through my career. I love what I do more than anything, if you ask any great medical scheduler they will tell you the same. The constant chaos, multitasking, puzzles, relationship building and time investigating a problem is what I love. Playing a very important part in the care provided to patients around the U.S. is what I live for.

Medical staffing before COVID-19 was much simpler. Working through COVID, provided many more problems and issues for staffing companies, hospitals and providers. Staying up to date with the latest CDC guidelines, along with the individual hospital bi-laws made this very difficult to ensure we are taking care of our now sick providers while also staffing the facilities. Understanding that our providers are also humans and were scared of what this all meant ultimately quitting healthcare together. We Begged providers to work endlessly, to work countless days in a row for other sick providers or providers who left with no notice. To hear the stories of the COVID unit in the facilities and how people were dying every day. To be told of physicians’/mid levels’ husbands, wives, brothers & sisters who contracted the disease and personally being on the phone daily with a doctor who set bedside, as he watched his wife give up her fight against COVID. COVID changed the healthcare industry and although ER and HM staffing seems to be starting to lean towards normal, nursing is where the shortage remains.

I would never find another career that I would love more, but that doesn’t mean some things do not need fixing in this field. I have been blamed, yelled at, belittled and embarrassed for things out of my control, in public & in private. This, I would say, is the most frustrating thing about medical scheduling. It is not often, but the entitlement of my time or extremely demanding physicians who treat the scheduler like the lowest of the low. I always remain professional, and take it, I provide the best assistance and always find a solution regardless of how I am treated. My Advice to everyone reading this is, just be kind. Your interaction with someone may be the thing that breaks them. It is 100 percent free, to be kind.