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Activation Pathway: Operational Efficiency

Problem context: staff time is consumed by repeat contacts, rework and manual follow-up that completed patient action would remove. Also searched as: operational efficiency, staff productivity, cost to serve.

A Nurse Assisting Patient In Wheelchair

6 Strategies for Decreasing Nurse Burnout

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Nurse fatigue and disengagement can pose serious problems for healthcare organizations, and a recent survey from Kronos found 63% of nurses say their job has caused burnout. The survey also found that more than 4 out of 5 nurses think hospitals today are losing good staff because other employers offer a better work/life balance. When nurses experience burnout—often defined as a state of emotional and physical exhaustion due to ongoing stress—it not only contributes to staff turnover, but it can impact the facility’s quality of care, patient satisfaction, and even medical outcomes. In fact, the 2019 PRC National Nursing Engagement Report found a correlation between levels of nurse engagement and HCAHPS scores, a measure of patient satisfaction in hospitals.

Strategies for Addressing Nurse Burnout

For these reasons, healthcare leadership may need to take steps to decrease nurse burnout, including the following six strategies.

1. Train Leaders to Recognize and Address Burnout

Nurse leaders play an important role in recognizing, addressing, and preventing the burnout of nurses. During their training, these leaders should be familiarized with the signs of an employee who may be disengaged or experiencing burnout, such as an increasing number of callouts, withdrawing from relationships, and becoming frustrated with small inconveniences. When leadership is able to recognize the signs of burnout early on, they can take steps to support their staff, finding ways to address stress levels before burnout becomes a more serious issue.

2. Improve Nurse-to-Patient Ratios

Studies have shown high nurse-to-patient ratios are directly related to burnout rates. For instance, research in the Journal of the American Medical Association found nurses in hospitals with 8:1 patient-to-nurse ratios are more than twice as likely to show high levels of emotional exhaustion as nurses in facilities with 4:1 ratios. The article explains that each additional patient over four per nurse carries a 23% risk of increased burnout. Reducing nurse-to-patient ratios may require bringing on additional staff, but the expense can offset other challenges, such as high nurse turnover, poor patient satisfaction, and even poor outcomes and readmission rates.

3. Include Nurses in Policy Discussions

Another proven way to combat emotional exhaustion among nurses is to give them the opportunity to participate in decision making, especially when it relates to their work. A study published in the journal Inquiry explains when nurses feel a lack of autonomy and control over their practice, they are more likely to experience burnout. Other research has shown hospitals that involve staff nurses in decision-making are better able to attract and retain nursing staff.

4. Implement Support Programs

Nursing is an inherently stressful profession, and organizations can help their nursing staff cope with the pressure of the job by implementing support and wellness programs. This could be a variety of things, whether it’s teaching better break scheduling, holding departmental meetings to talk about health, or creating comfortable respite areas for nurses. “Each nurse needs to find the self-care technique that works best for them,” Elizabeth Scala, author of Stop Nurse Burnout, told Healthcare Dive. “The best thing an organization can do is to assess what the nurses want/need to cope and prevent burnout. And then to listen to the feedback, implementing a variety of strategies to support their nursing staff.”

5. Involve Nurses in Scheduling

Many nurses work 12-hour shifts, and being on several days in a row inevitably leads to high levels of fatigue. In the Kronos survey, 55% of nurses said having more control of their schedule would reduce fatigue, and 60% said they would have a better work/life balance if they were more involved in their shift scheduling. While self-scheduling alone may not be an option, organizations may want to look into ways to have nurses collaborate with nurse managers and staffing offices to create schedules that work for everyone.

6. Reduce Non-Clinical Tasks

Nurses are highly trained clinical professionals, but most surveys of nurses find that a large percentage of their time is spent on non-clinical tasks. Utilizing non-clinical staff as part of a care team in order to tackle frontline non-clinical needs such as post-discharge follow-up and monitoring, preventive visit scheduling, and connecting patients with community resources will depressurize a nurses workload and allow them to focus on valuable clinical tasks.

More Resources on Reducing Burnout:

  • Reducing Physician Burnout: 5 Strategies
Guideway’s non-clinical Care Guides seamlessly integrate with your clinical team, helping drive patient behavioral change and address barriers hidden within social determinants of health. Fill out the form below to learn how Guideway can help provide the support your patients need while reducing the non-clinical workload of your clinical team.

Physician Practice Operations Efficiency: A Potential Key to Unlocking Your Potential

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Data Survey Indicates Link Between Efficiency and Patient Satisfaction

If you’ve wondered about what separates the best healthcare practices from the rest, physician practice operations efficiency might be one place to look. That was one of the key takeaways from the 2017 MGMA DataDive Practice Operations Survey.1 The survey gauged more than 1200 U.S. hospital and private-owned practices for their:

• Average office wait times

• Scheduling availability

• Use of patient portals

In a news release to announce the survey, MGMA leadership drew lines between efficient physician practice operations and patient satisfaction:
Medical practices face a variety of challenges today, and among the most addressable are practice operations which tend to separate top performing practices from the rest. With this survey, we aim to glean insights that will enable practices to improve efficiencies and better serve their patients by making processes as smooth as possible.

Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright, MD, MMM, FAAP, CMPE

MGMA President and Chief Executive Officer

Are You Helping Move the Need for Reducing Patient Wait Times?

Medical offices’ wait times are among the obvious indicators of efficiency in healthcare. If your healthcare practice has taken steps to make its practice operations more efficient in the past couple years, give yourself a small pat on the back. That’s because patient wait times were reduced by five minutes from the previous year, according the survey. It further translated into average wait time reductions of:

• 20 minutes between the waiting area and the exam room

• 17 minutes for hospital-owned practices

Is your practice contributing to this positive trend—or is it falling behind? This is an important question your practice needs to be able to answer.

How to Improve Your Physician Practice Operations and Join the Elite

Other than obvious indicators, you may now be wondering about other ways to improve your physician practice operations so you can either join or solidify your footing in the “best healthcare practices” classification. As a provider of patient satisfaction solutions, we noticed some key survey data that closely relate to the products and services we offer. These might be crucial areas for you to improve your efficiencies!

• Ease of Scheduling Appointments: This is vital for hospital-owned practices which—according to the survey—don’t see patients as quickly as physician-owned practices (by a margin of two days!).

• Engagement (Phone Calls): This is vital for multi-specialty practices that take an average of 49 seconds to answer incoming calls—as compared to surgical specialties that average 13.5 seconds!

• Satisfaction (Surveys): There’s a massive divide between practices that do patient satisfaction surveys (74 percent) and don’t (three percent)!

Nate McCormack is Guideway Care  Director of National Sales. Guideway Care is a cloud-based technology and services company that improves profitability and patient outcomes for hospitals and practices through end-to-end patient engagement solutions backed by clinical and non-clinical teams. Its HIPAA-compliant, SaaS platform improves care team workflows, automates patient communication and tracks patient progress to optimize the patient journey. Since 2004, leading healthcare providers have trusted Guideway Care to help acquire, manage and engage patients through complex episodes of care. 1 MGMA Releases Industry Benchmarks for Optimizing Medical Practice Operations, Including Findings That Average Wait Times Decreased by Five Minutes In 2016

Working Smarter with Healthcare Workflow Management Technology

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Improving Hospital Workflow Management Can Increase Both Employee and Patient Satisfaction for Bariatric and Orthopedic Surgery Healthcare workflow management is among the many crucial but occasionally overlooked aspects of how well hospitals, clinics and other medical practices achieve their objectives—whether with regard to financial performance or patient satisfaction. This is particularly true for orthopedic surgery and bariatric surgery centers, which both have unique and complex sets of activities that occur before, during and after a successful procedure. When healthcare workflow isn’t being managed well, procedures and processes in a hospital or medical practice may keep moving forward—at least until a crisis happens that can bring things to a standstill, which lowers quality of care along with patient and employee satisfaction. What often happens next is a post-crisis examination of the problem, which almost always puts the spotlight on healthcare workflow management. But no matter if it’s a specialized surgery center, a general hospital or a family medicine practice, one thing is certain: the larger the organization, the more challenging it is to control workflow in healthcare. For instance, at a small medical practice, a desk clerk about to take a lunch break can ask a nurse to handle the outgoing mail, with no need for special training, authorization or protocols. But as that same small medical practice eventually grows larger and its healthcare workflow becomes more complex, informal and unsophisticated solutions may no longer be an option. Thus enters the need to start examining the advantages of workflow technology in healthcare—which not only can immediately impact workflow efficiency, but also the concomitant benefit of reducing errors and improving patient outcomes as a result. One such healthcare IT solution in this context is a patient management system. A carefully selected and integrated patient management system generally shouldn’t need to replace an entire existing hospital workflow system, but instead, it should enhance and optimize existing workflow, communications and teamwork. This may include a host of daily responsibilities that can quickly cripple an inefficient and unprepared medical practice’s resources that include:

• Handling patient inquiries and reminders

• Scheduling appointments

• Verifying insurance

When a viable patient management system is in place to optimize healthcare workflow in an orthopedic or bariatric surgery practice, personnel can better focus on patient care.

Reducing Risk with Hospital Workflow Management

In as much that a carefully designed hospital workflow management system can improve healthcare operational efficiency, it can also reduce risks that are detrimental to patient outcomes. One example is information transfer, one of several crucial but avoidable errors the National Center for Biochemical Information (NCBI) identified in its report, Organizational Workflow and Its Impact on Work Quality. When hospitals use both paper and electronic records, information can become inefficient, redundant and untrustworthy. Matters can become even more troublesome when information is shared via telephone, text, whiteboards or other verbal orders that are not properly and electronically documented. A prime example of how using a dual information system can create significant problems is with patient readmissions that might have been unnecessary. Inefficient, unmanaged or simply sloppy patient information practices are a key reason why patients often need to be readmitted. However, patient management platform tools that integrate messaging and IVR surveys can streamline transition of care management and other issues before they escalate to a need for readmission. As with virtually any other type of business, the investment to source and install technologies for “invisible” problems like workflow management don’t often immediately demonstrate their ROI because a key function is to minimize risk. However, the inability to have solid healthcare workflow management systems in place will often demonstrate their value after a catastrophe occurs. As the saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and this couldn’t be a more appropriate sentiment for a discussion about healthcare workflow management technologies.
Guideway Care is a cloud-based technology and services company that improves profitability and patient outcomes for hospitals and practices through end-to-end patient engagement solutions backed by clinical and non-clinical teams. Its HIPAA-compliant, SaaS platform improves care team workflows, automates patient communication and tracks patient progress to optimize the patient journey. Since 2004, leading healthcare providers have trusted Guideway Care to help acquire, manage and engage patients through complex episodes of care.

Maximizing Health Operations Management Efficiencies

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Optimal efficiency may sound more like a technical term than an approach to healthcare, but cutting-edge healthcare operations management resources can help you get there. With an examination into clinic practices and professional guidance toward the ideal opportunities for you, healthcare operations management can be the ticket your clinic needs to succeed. Running a healthcare facility is a big job, especially for clinics with hundreds of patients and a huge support staff. Even with a trend toward more modern innovations—for example, paperless practices—healthcare operations management is still an uphill battle for clinics unsure about what it takes to improve efficiencies. Despite the tendency to stick with current practices regardless of the potential for progress, a different approach to healthcare management can save money and improve patient outcomes—which is especially important for clinics that participate in new reimbursement models such as value-based care.

What is Healthcare Operations Management?

In essence, healthcare operations management refers to the practice of converting labor into output in the most efficient way possible within the confines of a business. This means breaking away from traditional business norms in order to see improved results with less effort, reduced headcount, and a decreased time commitment. Sound a little convoluted? Let’s break it down further. In a standard medical clinic, a nurse, receptionist, or administrative team is on hand to perform a host of functions, including:

• Schedule appointments

• Answer patient questions

• Retrieve records

• Check patients in

In busier clinics, this kind of endeavor can take a bustling collective of multiple people, shuffling through paper files, entering appointments manually into a calendar, and transposing patient answers from intake forms. If this doesn’t sound strange to you, it probably isn’t; thousands of clinics around the country still operate this way. However, the reliance on manual activity is far from the most efficient option, leaving plenty of places for your clinic to improve. Increasing efficiencies in this circumstance means looking for pain points, identifying solutions, and implementing a new way to get things done. For example, there’s no need to manage a calendar by hand or take appointments over the phone when an online scheduling program can handle this for you. Additionally, going paperless can save time and space in filing, allowing your patients to access medical records electronically through a secure portal rather than at your front desk. There’s no need to use paper intake forms either; a tablet with electronic forms can save administrative staff members time while ensuring all information is uploaded accurately into a central CRM platform. And while someone does indeed need to greet patients and answer the phone, one person can handle the task of managing the lobby—not an entire team.

How PaaS Patient Management Tools Can Help

For many clinics, especially those set in their ways, even small steps in the right direction can seem overwhelming. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. With help from platform-as-a-service (PaaS) patient management tools, it’s possible to easily identify weaknesses and quickly implement solutions designed to facilitate productive operations. Patient management tools go beyond convenience. From medical insurance processing to patient lead tracking, you can find ways to improve performance without sacrificing the bottom line. This, in turn, reduces the time spent by your team, creating a more efficient atmosphere in the office.
John Richmond is Guideway Care CEO. Guideway Care is a recognized leader for innovative healthcare management solutions. To learn more about software solutions that will save time and money, and further your quest to become a more efficient facility, please contact us.

3 Ways Your Practice Can Save Money and Be Cost-Efficient

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Out-of-pocket healthcare expenses are on to the rise. Your patients’ medical bills have also increased, and they may pay slowly or not at all. If so, that means it’s more important now than ever for your practice to save money and be cost-efficient.  MDnetSolutions can help. Since 2004, MDnetSolutions has been helping healthcare professionals like you with patient engagement, patient management and outcomes management solutions.  We understand the challenges you face in the healthcare industry. Here are three solutions that can have an immediate impact on your practice:
  1. Boutique medical call center – an extension of your practice without the expense of adding additional staff MDnetSolutions’ team of professionals answers patients’ calls on your behalf, manages intake into your scheduling book and reminds patients of appointments. Through our team’s efforts, your patients will get the timely care they need and you will have fewer no-shows.
  2. Lead and Patient Tracking – maximize patient intake Our web-based, HIPAA-compliant program captures and tracks your patients from initial intake through every stage they progress to while under your care. Everything you need to know about everyone under your care is available with just one click.
  3. Online patient education – a cost savings and a convenient way to expand your reach You and your patients no longer have the expense or inconvenience of traveling to in-person educational events.  MDnetSolutions creates educational videos that help you communicate your message to a larger audience 24/7 on your website.
All it takes is a brief needs assessment with an MDnetSolutions representative to get these services up and running in no time. Call 888-986-3638 today or visit https://sequencehealth.com/contact-us to schedule a quick consultation.