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Team approach critical to good patient care
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Our 12-year-old son is an incurable New York Yankees fan. As is true of all Yankee fans this season, he just can’t figure out why the team is languishing in mediocrity. They certainly seem to have the right “stuff” – a line-up of marquee names, tremendous individual talents and major league sports’ biggest payroll. However, on most nights, their pitchers struggle. On the rare occasion in which the pitching is solid, the bats are silent. Go figure.
Regardless of why the Yankees have struggled this season, it has served as a great lesson in teamwork. The fact is that a team is always more than the sum of its parts and the efforts of any one superstar alone is often not enough. While this is a valuable lesson for any kid, it’s also a humbling reminder of how we should conduct our practices.
Constant reassessment
Personally, we are constantly reassessing our team. We realize the success of our practice hinges upon one outcome: a healthy, happy and satisfied patient. To meet this objective we must provide more than competent care. We must do so in a timely and efficient manner. We also appreciate that this is no easy task given the constraints of today’s practice. All of us, to varying degrees, struggle with balancing large patient volumes with the economic realities of managed care. It is for precisely this reason our team is so important.
Given the diversity and complexity of our patient population, we’ve determined that a 15-minute appointment interval works best in our office. Doing so allows us to provide comprehensive, quality care without our patients feeling rushed.
Three areas of practice
To accomplish this we’ve structured our practice into three areas: reception, clinical care and optical services. The reception staff provides much more than “meet and greet” services. They arrange patient appointments, process contact lens orders, triage phone calls, validate insurances and initiate and complete each patient encounter.
Our clinical care technicians likewise provide a myriad of data collection services, ranging from visual acuity measurement to specular microscopy to chair side scribing.
Our optical services are rendered by highly skilled, knowledgeable professionals who believe there is no substitute for exceptional quality.
Team investment essential
While we constantly strive to be a better team, we’ve learned a few valuable lessons along the way. We’ve learned, first and foremost, that it’s essential to invest in our team. Our billing specialists regularly attend insurance seminars, our technicians are involved in American Optometric Association paraoptometric certification and our licensed opticians frequently attend continuing education. We’ve also learned the importance of delegating with authority and the fact that our patients appreciate the skill and expertise of each team member.
Simply put, our reception staff, clinical technicians and opticians are the experts in their respective areas. As a team, we work in concert with all staff members to engender a sense of patient confidence and satisfaction.
As I see it, an integrated team approach only becomes more imperative with time. As health care becomes more complex and technology leveraged and “managed,” a well honed team is essential. To meet these needs, I’m sure our practice will further evolve. Remember, no one has the perfect team. Not even the Yankees.