Hospitals and primary health care institutions are increasingly looking for new ways to improve efficiency. As well as having more time for the main tasks. However, there are some common shortcomings that make primary care negative.
Inefficiency in primary care during preview
The key areas of inefficiency that occur prior to the patient visit were identified as follows:
Primary Care: Appointments and Scheduling.
According to a study, the organization of patient visits was seen as a pervasive source of inefficiency within participating primary care practices, requiring constant attention from office administrators.
A major scheduling problem was patients missing appointments, with offices reporting that up to 30 percent of appointments ended in “no shows.”
The practices also reported that they faced the challenge of controlling the length of patient appointments. For example, patients scheduled for 15-minute appointments sometimes spent a full hour with the doctor, hurting productivity and increasing wait times for other patients.
Patient phone calls
The practices reported receiving up to 20 patient calls per provider each day. In many practices, the front desk staff was responsible for answering these calls. Depending on the timing and nature of these calls, they could interfere with other front desk tasks, such as registration, insurance verification, and reminder calls.
In many practices, this resulted in high call abandonment rates, low call and message bounce rates, long wait times, and inefficient use of staff time.
Primary care; Inefficiencies during the visit
The key areas of inefficiency that occur during the patient visit were identified as follows:
Design practice
Some practices reported that their physical layout and size limited their ability to grow, modernize, and improve.
In some cases, a suboptimal design created bottlenecks or forced patients to backtrack as they progressed through practice, increasing the length of visits and decreasing the percentage of value-added time for the patient.
Communication
The patient’s medical history is an essential component of communication during the visit, as it documents the patient’s encounters with the practice; therefore, it must be readable, up-to-date, and accessible.
Delegation and staffing
Practice managers consistently reported that having the most effective number and mix of staff and clearly defining the role of each staff member were central components to an efficiently operated practice.
The practices also reported that poor human resource management was a common source of inefficiency.
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