Efficiency is extremely important for medical clinics where health care providers never seem to never have enough time. Even as technology accelerates processes and expands your business functions, clinics still must streamline their operations on their own to remain profitable and popular with health care consumers.
In order to benchmark clinic efficiency and productivity, use a process analysis guide or template. For example, track every document’s movement through the office from person to computer and vice versa. Focus on how many times documentation is handled, and who handles the paperwork. In the same way, review the patient flow starting from the time they check in until they leave. Identify who they interact with, how long it takes for each individual, and what commonly causes delays. If you evaluate each process in order to identify waste and redundancies, then you can better streamline the processes through written guidelines and modifications. Bear in mind that standardization can only result through continuous improvement and openness to suggestions.
Evaluate each employee’s role and responsibilities in the clinic. If an employee is highly qualified for a certain task, then it is best to delegate the task to another professional. For instance, doctors shouldn’t be the ones correcting paperwork or scheduling appointments when there is a line out the waiting room doors. In the same way, employees who excel in certain fields, such as IT or data entry, should be assigned computer related tasks. Ideally, physicians will delegate to nurses, who will delegate to their medical assistants, who will in turn delegate to administrative staff. Cross-training employees will also accelerate the delegation process because flexible teams can easily respond to unexpected tasks or incoming patient surges.
There are many software options available for health care services and needs. For example, most programs come with patient scheduling, pre-access administration, revenue cycle, electronic health data storage or EHR replacement plans, and surgery management functions. They also often come with financing, patient agenda, human resources, and even performance optimization functions. Health information system programs will maximize revenue, increase efficiency, and improve health care consumer satisfaction. In small clinics where managers wear many hats, health information programs will help them deal with everything from employee staffing, to acquiring resources to ordering medical supplies. As a bonus, they will also be able to access detailed, customized reports that will help quality and safety improvement purposes. Other popular programs include electronic health record and health storage date archive programs.
Clinics will improve their efficiency through being results driven and committed to patient safety and positive outcomes. Using new processes, delegation and training techniques, and new technology and software you can enable your business to remain effective and flow smoothly.
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