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Frustrated with unpolished clinic operations?
Examine and smooth patient flow with this daily clinic review tool.
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Credit for inspiring this month’s column goes to dear clients in Pennsylvania – you know who you are. We met recently for a board and senior management staff retreat to discuss practice operations, including a number of opportunities to improve clinical flow and efficiency.
By the midpoint of the meeting, having heard doctor after doctor complain about continued inefficiencies on the clinic floor, it was obvious they had never really provided much in the way of cohesive feedback to their managers about what was so vexing. As one manager posed, “Why haven’t you said something to us before this?”
What then resulted was a brainstorm to formalize the feedback process: “Let’s provide a fast, simple way for doctors, at the end of a clinic day, to let their managers know just how they think things went that day.”
Daily clinic review tool
One of the “missing links” in clinic management is an effective feedback tool to provide doctors and managers with a common starting point for evaluating and improving weak areas. Too often, doctors will confront managers about events from the distant past or unfairly amplify one small error in an otherwise great day. The review tool that follows can help foster the communication needed to agree on, make and then monitor needed improvements.
How to use it
Pick a reasonable clinic review interval. This might be daily if your center has large, ongoing difficulties, or as infrequently as once every few months (in the spirit of basic housekeeping) if the practice generally runs well.
At the end of every monitored clinic day (or half-day, if that is all that is worked) give each participating provider a copy of the review form to be completed before they leave for the day.
When the form is completed, it is handed to the head technician for supplemental comments, and then to the office manager, site manager or administrator for their written input. Such comments could include notes about the day’s staffing levels, doctor arrival time, an excessive number of work-in or no-show patients, or broken equipment.
The efficiency calculations on the second page of this tool are then completed by the office manager or administrator.
Conduct periodic group meetings (with doctors, technicians and managers present) to review the completed forms, compare impressions, come up with needed improvements and evaluate progress.
I am not sure why it has taken the better part of three decades for me to develop this obvious reporting and feedback tool. But here it is, hot off the press. Feel free to adopt and modify this new tool as you see fit for your own setting, Please let me know if you come up with any improvements, or would like to report on how it helps in your practice.
For Your Information:
- John B. Pinto is president of J. Pinto & Associates Inc., an ophthalmic practice management consulting firm established in 1979. Mr. Pinto is the country’s most-published author on ophthalmology management topics. He is the author of John Pinto’s Little Green Book of Ophthalmology, Turnaround: 21 Weeks to Ophthalmic Practice Survival and Permanent Improvement, Cashflow: The Practical Art of Earning More From Your Ophthalmology Practice and the new book The Efficient Ophthalmologist: How to See More Patients, Provide Better Care and Prosper in an Era of Falling Fees. He can be reached at 619-223-2233; e-mail: pintoinc@aol.com; Web site: www.pintoinc.com.