A recent article in Outpatient Surgery Magazine on increasing room turnover speed offered an appropriate lesson for clinics and medical and dental practices. In emergency room and operating room settings, the ability to keep room turnover moving at a fast pace allows more patients to be seen and makes the most efficient use of physician and staff time. The same is true in medical clinics and in doctor and dentist practices. The more efficiently a medical practice operates the more patients it can serve.
Outpatient Surgery editor Dan O’Connor asks the critical question, Who is responsible for turnover? In today’s era of medical specialization where the emphasis often seems to be on defining duties as narrowly as possible, the answer is a surprising, Everyone.
No one is above helping with turnover. Nurses, scrubs and techs all participate in turnovers. No one is too good to mop or wipe down equipment. Turnover is everyone’s job. Kelly Wilson, the RN administrator of the Ponte Vedra (Florida) Plastic Surgery Center, told Outpatient Surgery.
The same is true in any medical or dental practice. From the receptionist who answers the phones and checks in patients to the nurse who takes the patient’s vital signs and symptom history to the accounts manager who processes billing information, each member of the medical office staff can aid or hinder the efficiency of patient care and the amount of time physicians and dentists are able to spend with patients. Using a HIPAA-compliant, live-operator medical answering service to manage office phone calls can increase medical office efficiency by giving your staff more time to concentrate on serving patients.