Originally Posted by shahall 
I work in a hospital endoscopy department and we have an on-going problem with late cases. One physician in particular consistently over-books cases and shows up 1-2 hours late on a regular basis but management refuses to do anything about his behavior. We are a small department with 3 endo suites, 4 FTE RN's and 4 PTE RN's. Our scheduled hours of operation is supposed to be 7:30AM - 4:00 PM but due to the large number of late cases we are now staggering shifts based on seniority, earlier shifts manned by higher senior nurses. Three RN's are now scheduled to work 7-3:30, two work 7:30-4:00 and one works 8-4:30. The 7-3:30 RN's leave every day on time and the later nurses are stuck staying late, sometimes til 6 PM or later, on a regular basis. Of course the 7-3:30 nurses see nothing wrong with this situation and are opposed to rotating the later shifts so resentment is building in our unit. I'd be interested in hearing how late cases are handled by other units.
We have the same problem in Louisiana. I did the same, scheduling staff to try to accommodate the cases and MDs, the only difference was, when it was time for the late shift to leave, the call team was notified, a RN and tech, to come in and finish the days cases. I suggest a time study, be sure to include all mds in the lab, apples to apples, so to speak, then take finite documentation to administration, being able to point out money saved in employee OT if only the md would show up on time, we also told the patient to ask the doctor why he was late and would notify the patient of our unsuccessful attempts to get the md to come. When a patient lets loose on a doctor because the staff hold the MD accountable, things change for the better, the md will check in with you and will give you his day's itinerary. Bottom line, administration looks at dollars, be able to show cost savings
Dealing with Late Cases
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