Re: On call vs. 24 hour staffing

[Kathy Young]

We have a 24/7 Help Desk staff to “observe and report.” Over the years, we have expanded their role somewhat to do simple troubleshooting – stop/start threads/processes. We have also done extensive documentation to help them triage actual interface problems vs. application problems in other systems that cause threads to queue messages or go to “opening” states. Doing that has dropped our after hours calls from >15 per week when I started to <5.

There are three of us in the interface group. We rotate on call, take vacation one at a time, etc. Our administration’s attitude is that – this is a 24/7 organization, and we will be available 24/7 to support our systems. Like others, if the on call person cannot resolve the problem, the senior interface person may get called on their “off” weeks.

There is no additional compensation for being on call. That’s been “calculated” into our base salary. However, our manager is very flexible. If we’ve spent considerable time over the weekend or during the night to troubleshoot a problem, we can get the time back by coming in later, leaving earlier, etc. Although we’re salaried, we do use a time tracker to log our work hours – our regular hours and our “after hours” calls.

To those of you who are still compensated for on call – I would not advise relying on that income to fund your retirement!

Kathy Young

Heritage Valley Health System