When you think of the medical treatment you give to your patients, you may be thinking of the actual procedures, treatments, and medications given to them to get them back to the best health possible. What you may not have considered, though, is the impact that practice management has on your patients’ health and treatment. The organization of and ease in which a medical facility operates affects the kind of care a patient receives.
I Will Give You Your Medicine, After I Fill Out Your Information, For the Tenth Time
Documentation of the patients’ treatment is extremely important; however, the task of filling out this information should not leave the patient with less than stellar treatment. If your patient has to wait a half hour longer for pain medication because you are filling out labs with the same information that was taken from them in triage, you are wasting valuable time. While nurses are a kind of superhero, the fact remains that with patient loads, daily tasks, and clerical duties it can be overwhelming to get it all done in an efficient manner.
You Mean I Don’t Have to Enter it Again?
By employing easy-to-use practice management techniques into your computer database, you will significantly cut time that is wasted on things that do not need to be done repeatedly. For example, a patient registration program will be used in triage to take down all important patient information such as name, address, next of kin, allergies, and past medical issues. When the patient is then meeting with the nurse, the information will not need to be taken down again as it will transfer smoothly with the patient file throughout their stay.
Scheduling
Trying to keep a working schedule, be it for the patients or employees, can be a major hassle. Some computer programs make it all but impossible to move things around, making you feel like the whole appointment book has been thrown off because you had to move one appointment. With a more user-friendly practice management system in place, changing appointments is effortless. Time is money, and in the medical field, time is also the difference between life and death. That is why your time cannot be wasted fighting with complicated computer programs—you need it to be efficient, quick, and helpful.
By situating the clerical duties you have so they are effortless and are no longer time consuming, you are freeing up more time to be spent on what really matters: your patients.
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Mercedes Potter is a part of an elite team of writers who have contributed to hundreds of blogs and news sites. Follow her @CedesPotter to see what else she’s been blogging about.