How healthcare facilities operate determines the effectiveness of a patient’s care — from their first encounter to their actual treatment. By helping them carry out preventive actions, healthcare facilities can mitigate risks and improve the quality of care.
Keeping your medical practice running smoothly can be a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re constantly running behind schedule and the idea of chaos is the norm, consider these steps to help you get and keep your practice on track.
Make the Patient As Your Focus
Create a patient-centered environment in which each staff member can make patients feel at home. There must be a culture where patients are the driving force behind everything you do.
From the very beginning, patients must feel listened to, involved in their care, and at the heart of what you do. As management, this fosters openness which encourages more engagement, better staff retention, greater quality assurance, fewer mistakes onward, and more proactive behavior from staff on the wards.
Bedside Testing
When patients arrive in the ER with an urgent need, doctors must make fast decisions. But some diagnostic tests require time to get results. Bedside or Point-of-care testing has made rounds in hospitals, and it is widely used in situations like sepsis diagnosis. Accurate test results are available in seconds, which greatly reduces hospitalization time.
A study of American hospitals has found that the importance of point-of-care testing (POCT) is saving time (92%). With fast results in hand, more rapid treatment can be administered and positive outcomes for the patient.
Home pregnancy tests and blood glucose monitoring are some common types of POCT. There are also tests for fecal occult blood, rapid strep, and hemoglobin.
Observe the Flow of Patients
Spend a couple of weeks tracking the patients you see. You’ll want to know how many patients, how much time you spend with them, and what days the majority of people visit. This is useful information because it will tell you your patient load and provide time for each visit.
Use Innovative Technology
Hospital management is more than just the admission of patients for different ailments. There are several things to be taken care of efficiently. A hospital run on modern machines is quite advantageous — it will create efficiency, save time, and most importantly, serve a maximum number of patients in the minimum possible time.
A good example would be medical imaging which is contributing to the increased need for storage. It makes up about half of all healthcare data. The explosive growth of medical images has become a major challenge for healthcare IT to cope with. A cloud-based medical image storage system is an innovative idea that helps medical imaging companies move away from traditional storage models.
Another would be RFID tags attached to the equipment. When staff members don’t know where to find equipment and supplies, cost and time savings can fall short, and patient care can be compromised. RFID technology makes tracking items much easier. Tracking things like supplies, equipment, and tools means your staff spends much less time hunting down the materials they need. They can then spend more time with their patients.
Have A Good Communication System
The healthcare sector has long faced problems securing effective communication systems between doctors and patients, staff and doctors, and staff members within hospitals.
Communication breakdowns can lead to misdiagnosis of patients, poor patient care, and dysfunctional organization within the hospital. To ensure that these problems are not repeated, each hospital should custom fit their communication systems.
Identify Areas of Vulnerability
What are the areas your hospital is struggling in? Is there a way to strengthen weak points and maximize the best performance? Hospitals and doctors should identify the vulnerable areas and employ resources to strengthen them.
Think of ways to improve services like dialysis treatments within your hospital. Some hospitals that outsource their dialysis services have experienced a decreased level of service and quality while being subjected to increasing costs. Come up with solutions, like hospital partnerships for dialysis, that can work alongside you to provide the best things for your dialysis program.
Train Hospital Staff Well
Staff must be competent in their roles to ensure the continued provision of the highest quality care for patients. All staff should be encouraged to undertake further training in both management and technology to enhance their skills.
For any new employee, train them well before letting them manage patients in the hospital. Give them enough time to get accustomed to the environment and the working processes. Introduce training programs for your existing employees as well.
For hospital workers, improving workflow can mean the difference between better patient care and quicker recovery times. Hospital administrators and clinical providers should work together to find forward-looking solutions to improve patient care.