How COVID-19 has made provider and room scheduling a strategic imperative – and what health systems can do about it
The pandemic placed an insurmountable amount of pressure on health systems’ exam room availability, forcing organizations to quickly understand their capacity. Now, as clinic volumes are beginning to decrease, health systems are forced to answer the question, “How do we maximize capacity with the resources we have?” During a webinar on September 30, Mary Bolg from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical and Amelie Rein from University of Minnesota Physicians joined Modern Healthcare Custom Media to address how new room management technology helps to maximize capacity and revenue, strategies for ensuring preparedness of patient fluctuation and how room scheduling helps keep patients and providers happy. To access the full webinar, sponsored by QGenda, please visit: www.modernhealthcare.com/RoomSchedulingWebinar.
1 Managing your resources, people, space and equipment helps to effectively and efficiently care for patients.
Space has become increasingly more constrained as organizations grow and add providers who share resources and equipment. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis has only heightened stress on capacity as social distancing regulations put pressure on building space. To begin restructuring your organization’s capacity, you must evaluate your clinical areas of improvement, determine what additional components are needed to increase access, and optimize the resources you already have.
2 Utilization of providers and rooms directly impacts ability to manage capacity.
Overutilization of providers and rooms can prevent putting patients behind schedule. A systemwide platform can help to optimize these schedules by keeping them in one place and providing comprehensive clinic visibility, leading to streamlined processes, productivity and resource utilization. With improved efficiency, providers are empowered to make quick and data-driven decisions regarding capacity and revenue management.
2 New exam room management technology enables organizations to maximize capacity and revenue on a longstanding basis.
As COVID-19 quickly overwhelmed many organizations, systems launched telemedicine efforts to help manage capacity. Using telemedicine appointments helps balance the vast increase of patients, while also following social distancing regulations. Scheduling technology has become an imperative tool to ensure patients have improved access to care. This technology needs to include accurate and accessible data, visibility into space availability and utilization, and the flexibility to provide adaptable, digital solutions that will increase organizations’ revenue.
4 Organizations need to strategize for large patient fluctuations as clinics revamp to pre-COVID-19 levels.
The pandemic has forced providers to limit their capacity for the sake of patient safety. Many providers have too many appointments with not enough rooms, exam rooms are assigned to departments without warning and there is often low visibility into rooms that are in close proximity. This can hamper provider growth and cause downstream challenges. In order to prepare for large a new influx of patients, organizations need to make changes to patient flow processes by implementing proper spacing and distancing guidelines, balancing appointments and shifts and strategizing to minimize financial impact.
5 Centralized provider and room scheduling makes both patients and providers happy.
A centralized platform should be introduced across an entire enterprise to maximize capacity success. The platform needs to have visibility into where providers are working and how to contact them quickly. The centralized system can also assist with matching providers to rooms, upfront planning, and enabling analysis of patient satisfaction. Centralization can also assist in checking daily schedules, helping providers to know the latest changes, while also allowing for optimized space sharing and streamlining rescheduling. This ultimately increases provider and patient satisfaction.