Holiday schedule in an FMG: how to build it without a fight.

What the program requires over the holidays

The rest of the year, section 4.6.1.1 of the MSSS funding and professional support program for FMGs requires at least 68 hours of services per week over seven days, with a family physician or an IPSPL present at all times. The holidays are the only exception in the text. During two fixed periods, the floor drops to 44 hours over six days.

The rest of the section still applies. An open day still counts at least four consecutive hours of services, which rules out filling the 44 hours with a string of short mornings. Offered slots are still sent to the provincial orchestrator through the EMR, as they are the rest of the year. A published slot with no name on it on December 27 still sends patients to the door.

A note for FMGs that also hold a network-access designation. The drop to 44 hours targets the FMG mission in section 4.6.1.1. Network-access hours fall under section 5.8.1, and that is where to check what your level requires over those two weeks, rather than assuming the drop covers both.

Period	Dates for 2026-2027	Statutory holiday	Minimum
Christmas week	Tuesday December 22 to Monday December 28	Friday December 25	44 hours over six days
New Year's week	Tuesday December 29 to Monday January 4	Friday January 1	44 hours over six days

Placing 44 hours over six days

This year's calendar helps. Both holidays fall on a Friday, and each period starts on a Tuesday and ends on a Monday. Closing on the holiday therefore leaves six days, which is exactly what the program asks for. What remains is how to spread the hours over those six days.

Here is one possible split for Christmas week. It is an example built for illustration, not a recommendation: your patient volume, your walk-in blocks and your service agreement decide the real numbers.

Day	Hours of services	What to plan for
Tuesday 22	10	Close to a normal day, last follow-ups before the break
Wednesday 23	10	Busy walk-in, last-minute renewals
Thursday 24	5	A single morning block, above the four-hour minimum
Friday 25	Closed	The week's day without services
Saturday 26	5	Walk-in only
Sunday 27	4	The minimum block, held by one person
Monday 28	10	Part of the team returns

Total: 44 hours. New Year's week follows the same pattern, from Tuesday December 29 to Monday January 4, with January 1 closed. Writing this table first, before a single name, turns a discussion about time off into a list of slots to fill. A team agrees on fifteen slots more easily than on "who wants to work over the holidays".

Why the holiday schedule goes off the rails

The difficulties look alike from one FMG to the next, and they mostly come down to the order in which decisions get made.

Requests arrive before the rule

A physician writes in September that she will be with family from December 23 to 30. A colleague makes the same request in October. A third, who worked Christmas last year, asked for nothing because she assumed it was her turn to be off. With no written rule, the schedule gets built around whoever wrote first, and the third finds out in November.

A deadline for requests, announced to the whole team, settles much of the problem. The rotation settles the rest: a request received before the deadline is noted, then it comes after the order already written, not before it.

The 24th and the 31st are not statutory holidays

Quebec's Act respecting labour standards lists December 25 and January 1 among statutory holidays. December 24 and 31 are not on the list, and neither is January 2. Those are still the days everyone wants, because the family dinner happens the night before.

A rule that says "we alternate Christmas and New Year's" therefore leaves both eves out of the split, and that is often where the argument starts again. The rule has to name the exact days: "the Christmas week group covers the 22nd to the 28th, eve included". Written that way, nobody has to interpret it.

Three statuses, three time-off calendars

FMG physicians are nobody's employees, and their holiday time off is settled between colleagues. Nurses assigned by the establishment follow their collective agreement, with its own request dates and its own priority order. Staff hired directly by the FMG, often the front desk, fall under the Act respecting labour standards: someone who works a statutory holiday gets paid for the hours worked, plus an indemnity or a paid compensatory day off taken within the three weeks before or after the holiday.

These three calendars are decided at different times by different people. If nobody crosses them before publishing, the FMG discovers a day where two physicians work with nobody at reception. Our article on nurse and nurse practitioner scheduling details who decides what for each status.

The two weeks need someone in charge

Over the holidays, the manager is often off too. A physician calls in sick on December 27, and nobody knows whom to call or who can step in. A cancellation that gets settled in twenty minutes in March can leave a slot uncovered for a whole morning over the holidays. Naming one reachable person in advance, with the list of who can take which slot, costs one line in the schedule. The rest depends on your on-call replacement process, if you already have one.

The rotation, written for three years

Christmas does not balance out within a single year. There is only one, and it lands on someone. Teams that stopped arguing about it settled it across years: what a person did this year decides what they do next year, and the order is published several years ahead.

The simplest setup splits the team into two alternating groups. Group A works Christmas week this year and New Year's week next year, group B does the opposite. With a larger team, three groups give everyone one fully free year in three, at the cost of a heavier week for the other two. Either way, each group has to be able to cover the 44 hours of its week on its own, which you can check against the table in the previous section.

Year	Christmas week (Dec 22 to 28)	New Year's week (Dec 29 to Jan 4)	Off
2026	Group A	Group B	Group C
2027	Group B	Group C	Group A
2028	Group C	Group A	Group B

Two cases come back every year and deserve a sentence on the same page. A physician who joins in the fall goes into the group that needs people most, not the one that is off. Swaps between groups are allowed, provided they are written down and approved before publishing, or next year's rotation no longer knows who did what.

The holidays also count toward fairness for the rest of the year. A December 25 shift is not worth an April Tuesday, and putting both in the same total lets them trade against each other. Our article on fair on-call distribution suggests a separate column for statutory holidays, which the holiday rotation fills.

The right time to write this rotation is June, before anyone has a plane ticket. The detailed schedule can follow later at the usual pace, since everyone already knows which week they work. A team that reaches October with nothing written applies the rotation to this year, taking time off already granted into account, and sets 2027 and 2028 in the same meeting. Next year, the discussion happens in June.

Where to start this week

If nothing is written in your FMG, the meeting does two things: it settles this year with the requests already in, and it writes the next two. An hour is enough, as long as you bring the old schedules. Here is the agenda.

1. Set the hours for both weeks. At least 44 hours over six days per period, with open days of at least four consecutive hours. Decide which days close first, then who works.
2. Pull up the last three years. Who worked on the 24th, the 25th, the 31st and January 1st. The old schedules are enough, and they settle most "it's me again" before anyone says it.
3. Write the 2026 to 2028 rotation. Two or three groups alternating between Christmas week and New Year's week. What someone did this year decides next year.
4. Announce a deadline for requests. This year, one week from now. In later years, the end of June. A request received after that comes after the rotation.
5. Cross-check with the rest of the team. Nurses, nurse practitioners, front desk. A week with three physicians and nobody at triage holds up no better than a week with no physician.
6. Publish and name who handles surprises. One reachable person for the two weeks, with the list of who can replace what. The rest of the team then knows whom to write to.

Where Synchro fits

Synchro keeps the holiday rotation and the rest of the year in the same schedule. Each person writes their constraints in plain language ("off from December 29 to January 4, it's my year"), the team chooses which columns to equalize, statutory holidays included, and Synchro equalizes them on every schedule with the running totals visible to everyone. Physicians, nurses and front desk sit in one team calendar, which shows the day with nobody at reception before it happens. A slot that frees up on December 27 is offered to every eligible physician at once, even while the manager is off. Pricing is $10 CAD per user per month.

The limits, to be clear. Synchro does not calculate the statutory holiday indemnity or staff payroll, and does not apply a collective agreement for you. It does not decide the rotation either: the order and the groups are the team's call. Synchro does not replace your EMR, which remains what sends your slots to the orchestrator, and holds no patient data.

Further reading

• How to distribute on-call shifts fairly in a medical team
• The 27 real constraints in an FMG schedule
• Nurse and nurse practitioner scheduling in an FMG
• On-call shift replacement in an FMG: escaping the phone cascade
• On-call scheduling software
• Pricing