ClinicShifts vs. Your EHR's Scheduler: PointClickCare, GEHRIMED, and the Coverage Gap
Post-acute groups often say they schedule in the EHR. The EHR schedules visits. Nobody is scheduling coverage. Here is the difference, and why they don't compete.
When we talk to post-acute groups about scheduling, a common answer is "we do that in the EHR." Usually that means one of two things. The group charts in PointClickCare, the facility's system, and works from its census. Or the group runs its own post-acute EHR, most often GEHRIMED, and plans visits there. Both are real scheduling. Neither is the scheduling problem this article is about.
Product details change. This describes the general shape of these systems as we understand it at the time of writing; check the vendors' own sites for current features.
Two different questions
Every EHR scheduler answers a question about patients: which residents does this provider need to see, in which facility, and when is each visit due. That is the encounter side of the practice, and it belongs in the EHR because the visit has to be documented and billed there.
A coverage schedule answers a question about providers and buildings: who is covering Cedarhill this week, who takes Sunridge when Dr. Patel is out, who is on call Saturday, and does the director of nursing at each facility know. That is the operations side, and in most groups it lives in a spreadsheet, a group text, or the administrator's head, regardless of how good the EHR is.
The EHR knows the patient list. It does not know that Dr. Patel called out at 6am, that the NP who could cover only works Mondays and Wednesdays, or that the facility's front desk is still expecting Dr. Patel.
PointClickCare
PointClickCare is the facility's system. The nursing home owns it, and your providers are guests in it. It is excellent at what the facility needs: the resident record, orders, the census. Its practitioner app is for charting, orders, and e-prescribing from a phone; it does not schedule practitioners at all. What it cannot be is your group's schedule, because it is scoped to one building and owned by someone else. A group covering twenty facilities is a guest in twenty separate instances. There is no place in that arrangement for "here is our whole group's month across all twenty."
GEHRIMED
GEHRIMED is built for practices like yours, and its scheduling is oriented around the visit. Its census screen shows which residents are overdue for a visit and lets a practitioner set up scheduled visits for a particular building. For planning a provider's day inside a building it does a job a general EHR does not. Where groups still reach for a spreadsheet is the layer above the visit: assigning providers to facilities for the month, handling call-outs, on-call rotation, letting facilities see who is coming, and telling everyone when the plan changes. Those are not documentation problems, so it is not surprising that a documentation system is not where they get solved.
What ClinicShifts does, and doesn't
ClinicShifts is the coverage layer only.
- One schedule by facility and by provider, for the whole group and the whole month.
- Conflicts flagged at assignment: double bookings across buildings, time off, part-time patterns. On-call sits on the same board without false conflicts.
- A live link per facility, no login, so directors of nursing and front desks see who is coming and can subscribe to change emails.
- Notifications to the providers involved and to subscribed facility contacts when anything changes.
- Draft, then publish. Providers only see shifts once you release them, and anything can be undone.
- Mobile apps for the admin to reassign and publish from anywhere, and for providers to see where they are tomorrow.
It does not chart, bill, or hold patient information, and it does not sync with PointClickCare or GEHRIMED. The EHR keeps the visits. ClinicShifts keeps the coverage. Your providers use both, for different questions.
Side by side
| Question | EHR scheduler | ClinicShifts |
|---|---|---|
| Which residents does Dr. Patel see today? | Yes | No |
| Which facility is Dr. Patel in today? | Per facility, in that facility's record | Yes, across all facilities |
| Who covers Sunridge when Dr. Patel calls out? | No | Yes, with conflicts flagged |
| Does the facility know who is coming? | Only if they look in their own system | Live link, no login, change emails |
| Who is on call Saturday? | No | Yes |
| Does the schedule change from a phone? | No | Yes |
| Patient data | Yes | Never |
How to tell whether you have the gap
Ask your administrator what happens when a provider calls out. If the answer involves a spreadsheet, a group text, or phone calls to facilities, the EHR is scheduling visits and nobody is scheduling coverage. That is the gap ClinicShifts fills, and it fills it without touching the EHR at all.
Send us the spreadsheet or the group text and we'll import it into a free trial: providers, facilities, and the current month, plus a training session with your admin. The first 90 days are free, no card, no charge until you choose to continue.