Physicians Practice - February 2008 - (Page 26)

EFFICIENCY think nurses tend to be more efﬁcient if they are busier,” Capko offers. It may also be that you need more help. Many practices are proud of how they get by with fewerthan-average employees, ﬁguring that this is a sign of cost-effectiveness, but often the reverse is true: Understaffed practices tend to be less efﬁcient, especially when physicians are spending their valuable time on tasks that could be performed by lower-paid staff, if only there were enough staff to do the job. “If by adding staff, it frees up the physician’s time to see X number of additional patients a day, it’s not an expense — it’s an investment,” Wetmore says. Of course your ofﬁce has patients in it, as well as staff. Smart practices set high expectations for patient involvement. You might have patients make their own appointments online, type their own medical histories into software that interacts with your EMR, or keep a personal health record. We’ve even heard stories from practices that encourage patients to pay their portion of the bill once they get an EOB from their payer. They know what they owe; why wait for a bill from the doctor? Educating patients about how to best handle reﬁll requests is another way you can push work onto patients. In group visits, patients can educate one another about their common disease. Some practices are even using electronic kiosks at check-in. Similar to check-in machines at hotels and airports, the machines recognize patients, check their insurance, and even process copays. It may sound impersonal, but, in fact, it’s possible to improve patient satisfaction with the digital interfaces. They reduce lines, can offer information in multiple languages, and patients can easily see their own demographic data, enabling billing to work easily for you and them. And consumers have gotten quite used to self-service technology: It’s how they do most of their banking, buy gasoline, and even purchase groceries. Simply asking patients to write down their main concerns and prescription needs before they enter the exam room can be a big time saver, too. “Let’s face it, you only have 10 minutes,” Capko points out. “How do you make that time the best it can be?” 3. GET FOCUSED READ MORE ABOUT IT! Visit PhysiciansPractice.com for additional articles and tools on boosting efficiency: • See how one physician changed his patient flow process to see fewer patients a day and still make more money. Type “A Better Way to Practice” in our Search Articles box. no-shows, learn how to improve by typing “It’s All About the Scheduling” in our Search Articles box. in our Search Site box and peruse our Buyer’s Guide vendors who promise enhanced efficiency from their products. • If your problem is scheduling or • Technology can help. Type “efficiency” Keeping focused is the third way to improve efﬁciency. Whatever you are doing, it’s best to keep the goal in mind and minimize distractions. First, think broadly: What are your goals for the practice this year? What will make that happen? Then narrow it down: What tasks are most important to get done in any one day? Create the complete list, and then focus on what really needs to get done instead of hopping from task to task. For example, it may not be possible to cover everything in a single exam. So start by eliciting all the patient’s concerns at the beginning of the session. That means not cutting off the conversation at the ﬁrst concern the patient mentions. Physicians “tend not to ask if patients have more questions for fear it will take more time, but in reality, it takes less, because the questions a patient has don’t go away. They turn into phone calls which take more time … not only for the doctor but his or her staff. And those calls don’t come in at your convenience,” Capko says. Once you know what you are facing, you can suggest spending most of the visit on one or two core issues and touch on other topics more brieﬂy. You can plan the visit instead of working willy-nilly. The enemy of focus is interruption. Every phone call, nurse question, and pharma-rep visit forces you to multitask and takes you off your game plan. So what to do? Setting expectations can help. “A lot of the frustration comes from not establishing the rules up front,” Wetmore says. “People will play by the rules if you tell them what they are.” For example, when patients call in with a question that needs your attention, staff can tell them that you’ll call back by 4 p.m., or whatever time is realistic. That spares you a second phone call when the patient calls 30 minutes after her initial call, wondering why she hasn’t heard from you, and it allows you to plan your day. Watch out, too, for the ways you interrupt yourself inadvertently. Set aside speciﬁc times to review e-mail or reply to phone messages instead of checking constantly. If you need to manage some personal or business issue during ofﬁce hours, set a time to get it done instead of thinking about it throughout the day. Try to reduce the temptation to overdo the multitasking — another form of interrupting yourself. Consider this scenario: You are a pediatrician running behind schedule. While waiting on a quick strep result for the patient in Exam Room One, you jump into Exam Room Two. It feels like you are using your time well. But the case in Room Two is complicated, there is a lot to explain, and 15 minutes later, you have to interrupt yourself to go back to where the exasperated strep-patient’s parent has been waiting, write a script, then be WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM 26 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | FEBRUARY 2008 http://PhysiciansPractice.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - February 2008

Physicians Practice - February 2008 Contents The Bigger Picture: Your Future is in Your Hands Letters Physicians Practice Pearls: Creating an A+ Practice Noteworthy Cover Story: Conquering Time: 5 Keys to a More Efficient Practice In Balance: A Family Affair Technology: Making EMRs Work in the Exam Room In Practice: "I've Got Some Bad News" The Tech Doctor - The EMR: Savior or Poseur? Ask the Experts NEW! Healthonomics: How to Handle Health Savings Accounts The Administrator's Desk: Finishing School for New Managers Human Resources: Is Your Partner Impaired The Great Practice Makeover: Too Well-Liked for His Own Good? Coding Idealab: 'Why I Blog' Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - February 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.