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Time is Money!

                   

Although this seems self evident, many physicians struggle with time management. I see many doctors who say they will just do some of the office tasks to “save money.”  I recently read a blog from a psychiatrist in solo practice who had no support staff!  That means he is doing all of the office duties himself! Go ahead and do the math. If his employees made $20/hr, he would likely be losing on the order of $150-250/hr in lost revenue by virtue of missed patient billable time. Any physician who is doing any office work is leaving money on the table. Beyond just the financial loss, he or she didn’t go into medicine to be a bookkeeper! Besides, health care providers have enough on their plates trying to keep up with their clinical responsibilities.

Now that I have established the need for the physician to just practice medicine and leave the details to the low wage staff, what else would help keep the physician’s time efficient?  This is where quality practice management software comes into play. The next area of savings is to have a program that captures as much of the human workflow as possible. The biggest expense in a medical practice is payroll. Though there will likely always be a need for some humans in the office to do reception and call backs, the software program can take over many of the mundane human steps and processes. This then would save considerable overhead costs.

Lastly, the EMR should speed up the clinician’s practice, allowing an increase in productivity and satisfaction. This may be one of the harder challenges as many programmers do not understand the intricacies of a physician’s workflow. Only another physician can really understand that. A user driven development process is critical and takes a considerable amount of time and testing to pull off. In my experience doing this, it requires a lot of patience and give and take with the existing users. At the end of the day, it is rewarding to see how fast and efficiently the clinicians can use the program and enjoy practicing again.