Physicians Practice - February 2008 - (Page 27)

waylaid by a frantic nurse on your way back to Exam Room Two, where you end up repeating yourself to get the conversation back on track. It might be less stressful and more efﬁcient to do one thing at a time. Sure, maybe you can take on some quick task while waiting for the lab result, but diving into a whole new project can make for more confusion instead of less. Better yet, plan the day to avoid the temptation to multitask. If you are seeing a lot of strep, consider instructing your nurse to do a strep test on every child presenting with a 4. TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE Most of us are more productive at some times of the day than others. Accept it, and use it. If you don’t really get going until 10 a.m., why not start your ofﬁce hours at 10 and work through to 6 p.m.? You can always come into the ofﬁce early and spend that sleepy time catching up on paperwork. Morning person? Go ahead and see patients at 7 instead of wasting your go-get-em hours on e-mail. Similarly, know what your strengths are. Industry experts may opine about the inefﬁciency PHYSICIAN INTERRUPTUS 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. of batching work, urging physicians to do charting after every couple of visits instead of at the end of the day. You might hear about others saving time by sending lab results via e-mail or having clinical support staff handle more patient care. You might even know colleagues with digital day timers that beep with reminders to stay on time or complete one task or another. But if these methods sound unbearably foreign to you, realize that you don’t have to adopt them. Be yourself. It’s better to ﬁnd a time-management technique you will actually use than to never use the time-management techniques someone else likes. 5. JUST RELAX sore throat on intake. That way, the results are ready when you enter the exam room. There is no need to interrupt the exam to order the test or wait for results. If you are not able to easily identify such time-savers or put your ﬁnger on why you feel constantly interrupted, try keeping an interruptions log. “A problem well-deﬁned is 95 percent solved,” Wetmore notes. Simply grab a pad of paper and, with each interruption, note who interrupted you, why, and how much time it took. Then rate on a scale from A to D how important each interruption was, giving an A to the most signiﬁcant. Keep it up for a week or so. Then focus on reducing the Cand D-level interruptions, the notvery-important ones, especially if they are repetitive. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota, points out that American culture is obsessed with efﬁciency — that more is always considered better. Her book, “The Mantra of Efﬁciency,” examines how this near-religious principle took hold in the late industrial revolution. Now it’s considered an end in itself. You’re not a robot; don’t try to turn yourself into one. “I decide to resist my own impulses and even the productiveness criteria that’s all around us,” Alexander says. “So I write fewer articles each year than others and people give me grief about it. It’s not an easy choice.” Accepting any level of inefﬁciency is certainly not easy for physicians whose business depends heavily on volume. But how many patients does your practice really need to see to make ends meet? Maybe it’s time to do the calculations. Certainly, too many feel so pressed to work hard, they never take the opportunity to step back and look at how they can work smarter. The drive for efﬁciency itself gets in the way of efﬁciency. Taking some time to review your workﬂow can mean more time, and less anxiety about production, later on. • Pamela Moore is senior editor, practice man- agement, for Physicians Practice. She can be reached via pmoore@physicianspractice.com. For that matter, it’s worth considering how much more efﬁcient you really want to be. Jennifer Alexander, FEBRUARY 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 27 http://www.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

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