These days, it’s easy to feel stretched for time with all of the things going on in healthcare. That’s why it’s extremely important that healthcare professionals are helping manage your practice’s time in the best way possible. Time management will affect the number of patients you see, how many medical claims you send out, and the overall effectiveness of your practice. Here are a few tips to help your practice manage its time properly. 
- Set Goals for Your Practice
Make sure your practice has short and long term goals put in place. If you don’t know what you want for the future of your practice it will be difficult to be successful. Each goal you set should be a SMART goal: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound. Make sure the goals you set are written down, and reviewed frequently. Help maintain accountability by letting your staff know about the goals for the practice. Perhaps even give incentives to your staff if certain long-term goals are reached.
- Stay on Track with Patient Appointments
A patient’s time should be viewed as extremely valuable. Their first impression of your practice will most likely depend on how long they have to wait to be seen. If you notice your practice is continually falling behind schedule it may be time to reevaluate the time set for the different types of appointments in your practice. Write down how long each step of an appointment takes for every appointment that comes in for the week and average out your numbers. Use those numbers to set the length of the appointments and see if it helps your staff stay on time.
- Prioritize Your Workday
Start your workday off with a list of things that need to get done for the week. Rate each task with a level of priority to make sure that the most important tasks are being completed first. Use this list to decide which tasks can be delegated. Make sure to check your list often to stay on track throughout the week.
- Take Advantage of Technology
If your practice has been slow to implement EHR its time to hasten the pace. Your practice will save time looking up patient charts, histories and much more. Beyond EHR, it might be timelier for your practice to use voice recognition software or smart pens for patient documentation. A large chunk of your practice’s time will be spent on medical coding. It might be beneficial for your practice to consider outsourcing your medical coding. Outsourcing your medical coding will save your practice loads of time and it’s typically more cost effective.
- Avoid Multitasking
You might think the secret to productivity is having the ability to multitask, when in reality, it decreases productivity by 40%. Your brain is only able to truly focus on one thing at a time so make sure you are working on one project at a time. This will help avoid errors and increase productivity. Using social media while working shouldn’t even be considered multitasking it’s just plain time wasting, so try and avoid it at all costs.
Time is money and your practice can’t afford to waste it!
