Patient Flow to enhance productivity and retention

The Healthcare industry progressively recognises the effectiveness of patient flow and room utilisation is the key driver to increasing revenue and improving the efficiency of the practice whilst providing a positive experience to the patients.

As running a practice you can see from the patient’s perspective in their busy lives is no longer simply making an appointment to see a practitioner at the practice. Attention needs to pay on how patients can move seamlessly from check-in process to the treatment session until check-out. The goals to achieve as running the practice is simple as:

• Achieve patient satisfaction
• Patient can be well treated
• Practice can enhance the practice revenue

Having a complete understanding of patient flow and room utilisation can also make a significant impact to the staff and patients. Let’s break down into a few sections on how patient flow and room utilisation can impact the practice:

How do patient flow and room utilisation affect the staff, patients, and doctors?

By applying patient flow and room utilisation in your practice can significantly help the process of allocating the staff and doctor whilst the patient has an appointment. It can also help to prevent a bottleneck and increase the performance of the staff while having a patient. At this point, we can achieve patient satisfaction towards the services that we provide in the practice as the outcome patient will be feeling comfortable and happy during the process of their check-in to a treatment session until check-out.

How do patient flow and room utilisation impact the staff, and doctor retention?

Generally, patient flow and room utilisation can have a huge impact on staff and doctor retention, as a result, it is helpful to staff, including the nurse and doctor, in understanding the workflow as they perform their duties. The performance of the staff can be increased and maximized if the management provides them with support such as extra staff during times of high demand, as well as periodic training and evaluation of the staff. This is one of the elements that can make staff and doctor retention in your practice.

Here are a few simple things you can do to ensure an efficient and effective patient flow around your practice

1. Upon Arrival

Provide convenient parking spaces. Parking is part of patient flow and can dramatically affect both patient satisfaction and revenue. If your patient can’t find a parking space, they will arrive late, give up and leave without keeping their appointment or even become frustrated and next time they will choose another clinic, in this stage patient satisfaction and practice revenue will suffer. In addition, to adding more parking, the practice needs access to a drop off area, then the family member can drop off an elderly on mobility limited patient at the door, if this is accessible to patients your practice has instantly enhanced patient flow and experience.

2. Signage

Where do you want your patients to go when they arrive? Signage is the key here to make it easy for patients to find your practice, by having signs in the car park, directing patients to the entrance. Once inside have signs directing patients to the right floor clearly distinguishing or segregating a patient by type of service needed. Remember when the patients come in to see the doctor, in most cases they are not feeling 100% well. Your signage should be understood by all demographic, use pictures where appropriate which can be recognizable by multiple languages.

3. Prevent a bottleneck in check-in and check-out area

When we say bottleneck, we are referring to an area within your practice that impedes the patient flow/experience. The most common bottleneck is at the check-in/checkout area. To prevent lines in this area, be mindful of how you are expecting your patients to note their arrival, having systems like check in portals in your waiting area can really help patient flow.

Another tip is not overbooking your practitioners where they end up running late and unable to keep up with the arrivals. Know your practitioners capacity and schedule accordingly, no matter what technology or floor plan you adopt, if the practice over schedules practitioners, patients will sit in the waiting area and experience frustration, resulting in additional stress on the practitioner as well. Having five patients waiting at the same time can provide stress and may put pressure on the practitioner resulting in a lapse of judgement, decline in service. Have New Patients complete their registration paperwork online using a patient portal or have iPad’s onsite for this purpose.

You also need to be mindful of your check out system, have quick payment options where possible, Tyro can be a quick and easy way to ensure patient payments are completed as

efficiently as possible. Having the use of an online payment system would be beneficial for this also.

Create a layout for a logical traffic plan with no grid locks in your practice. When a patient checks in, they will then be seated in the waiting area until their appointment, on the way to the exam room, they may cross paths with a patient headed to the check-in area which makes for a potential problem. To provide a smooth flow for all involved, establish a traffic control plan, in an ideal world you would have patients move from the check-in area to treatment area to exam room and to check-out area without crossing paths or doubling back. Some practices will use “just in time” patient services where they have no waiting rooms, patients move directly from check to the exam rooms and the doctors enter from separate entrances which is dependent on how many rooms the practice has and how much alternate access you can provide your practitioners.

Running the practice to ensure the direction of flow contains no doubling back, some practices will establish a separate check out area, then outgoing patients don’t have to wait for the incoming patients to register. Many more solutions are available depending on the size and configuration of your facility, knowing these options is very important when you are either expanding or starting a new medical centre, examine your patient flow by sending a few staff members through the process and getting their feedback.

4. Utilisation

A good solution that can work very well in busy medical centres is a touchdown station for checking patient records or discussing results for the nursing team prior during or after a patient’s appointment. Providers can stay on schedule to reduce patient waiting times and spend more time with their patients instead of running back-and-forth, with a full utilisation of the nursing staff the patient can be ready for a consultation once a practitioner is checking the patient record, in most cases the doctor will need to sight the patients, it will allow for other correspondence to run smoothly and efficiently without inhibiting the doctor patient flow. Nursing staff can increase their efficiency by not having to drag the doctor midway through a consultation.

Consider a strategic use of your consult rooms to know how many patients your practitioners can handle at the same time. Most practitioners can handle two occupied rooms if they are available. Look at implementing a swing room to make the practice run more efficiently even when demand increases.

In looking at Patient flow we also look at your room utilisation. Identifying areas where productivity is lacking at the practice is important, utilising your practice to ensure profitability is your next step.