Medical practices that use EMR as part of a larger practice management plan have reduced patient wait times for appointments by improving efficiency. The more quickly a patient sees the doctor, the better that patient's quality of care. The ultimate goal is for patients to be seen the same day they call for appointments.
Appointment Availability Improvement
When a patient calls to see the doctor, being told the next appointment is weeks away ranges from inconvenient to dangerous depending on the patient's condition. Solutions for patients who need to be seen quickly aren't satisfactory: pawning the patient off on the next available physician instead of the regular doctor, adding the appointment to an already full schedule, or bumping an existing appointment.
A number of practices are using practice management strategies that allow them to improve appointment efficiency and reduce the number of appointments each person needs. Say a patient who comes in for blood pressure checks every six months has an appointment for a rash. The EMR shows his next blood pressure check a month away. Instead of having him come back for that, the doctor does the blood pressure check during the rash encounter and cancels the other appointment, opening a slot for someone else.
Patient Care Improvement
The goal of practice management is not simply office efficiency. The core of medical care is access. If patients can't see the doctor, there is no quality of care. When receptionists are forced to triage patients, a task they aren't qualified for, patient care suffers. Priority of care becomes a matter of how much a patient complains rather than how serious the person's condition is.
The problem could be viewed as one of supply and demand. The only way to reduce demand, the number of appointments required, is to cut a doctor's patient load and that diminishes the care provided by the practice. The alternative is to improve supply, defined as appointment availability, by managing patients to improve the quality of each appointment.
Satisfied Patients and Staff
Patients may not understand how these practice management steps improve their care, but they will certainly appreciate faster response time. When a person is told it will be weeks until the next appointment, the message received may be the patient isn't important to the practice. They may feel the doctor isn't taking their condition seriously and, what's worse is that patients may neglect their medical care because it is so difficult to get an appointment. Short appointment intervals make for satisfied customers.
The staff will experience reduced stress under this system of practice management. Unhappy patients take their frustration out on the front office and the nurses. Happy patients lead to happy staff, and happy staff leads to better patient care, which is the goal of any medical practice.
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