Patient Flow and Efficiency

Few medical practices have a scheduling strategy that maximizes the hours spent in the practice. Developing and implementing a strategy for your schedule provides the opportunity to operate in a fashion that produces better patient satisfaction, happier staff, and provides you, the business owner, a better quality in your professional life and better bottom line results.

I written on this topic in prior blogs, but bears repeating. In the current economic environment, physicians are looking to increase their patient load to help offset changes in reimbursement. Most do this without regard to their office's capacity to accommodate the extra flow. Capacity is defined as a physician's patient-time requirement, the staff's ability and talent, and the physical layout of your office.

You can locate any number of consultants skilled in evaluating your current schedule and staff competencies. You can also find architectural firms, such as Practice Flow Solutions, that specialize in medical office design.

In brief,

• Define roles and responsibilities with accurate job descriptions.
• Perform annual evaluations of your staff's performance ensures they are fulfilling the job requirements.
• Training, training, training. Too many practices pay too little attention to staff training.
• Train your reception staff to the extent you train your back office staff. Remember, they are setting your schedule. It is important for them to understand the time requirement for new patients vs. post-op checks, vs. more complex patient issues.
• Evaluate your own performance. Check your patient encounter count for the first six months of this year. How many patients did you see?
• How often did you end each patient session on time? Be honest. If you are comfortable seeing four patients per hour, don't schedule six without regard to your overall capacity.
• Consult a specialist. Don't underestimate the value a good consultant can bring. Good consultants more than pay for themselves with improved patient flow.

Here's a simple formula for you. Take your net collections for the first six months of 2009. Now divide that number by the total number of patient encounters. This gives you net collections per patient encounter. Or, in other words, this is the value to the practice every patient represents when they see you. Now, if a consultant can help you see one extra patient in the morning session and one extra patient in the afternoon session, well you do the math. Over the course of one year, the added income could and should more than pay for the consultant and any additional overhead.

All the Best.