The doctor’s time is a medical practice’s most precious commodity. Using your support staff and business associates, such as your answering service, wisely to maximize the amount of time doctors have available to see patients can significantly improve the productivity of your medical practice.
Office managers typically shoulder the responsibility for analyzing office procedures and staff usage and then recommending and implementing efficiency improvements. Use the following suggestions from Physicians Practice to help increase medical practice productivity:
Tasks that do not require the doctor’s skills should be assigned to other staff members. The personality of a physician’s practice directly reflects the doctor’s views on patient care so you may need to sit down with the doctor to determine which tasks he prefers to handle and which can be accomplished by others.
In a productive office, physicians and staff need to know they can count on each other to follow office protocols. Formalize procedures and set specific performance standards. Assign tasks to each staff member and train your staff well. Schedule regular performance reviews to keep everyone on track.
Train your staff to minimize physician interruptions by holding questions, phone calls and documents for specified blocks of time during the day during which the doctor can handle these items more efficiently.
Different types of patient appointments require different amounts of time and physician-patient interaction. Minimizing schedule variability by scheduling annual exams, rechecks and new patient visits for certain days of the week or times of day can improve productivity.
Using the right answering service can also improve medical practice productivity. Visit the MedConnectUSA website to find out how we can help your practice run more efficiently.