Efficiency and Excellent Patient Care: Mutually Exclusive or Compatible Concepts?
In the current world of medicine, doctors often experience frustration when attempting to bridge the gap between profitability for their clinic and providing exceptional patient care. In some ways, it can seem like it is impossible to run an efficient clinic while still delivering the highest level of care.
When I was a student in PT school, I had the opportunity to shadow some orthopedic physicians. It was a wonderful experience, but it was also eye-opening.
One of the physicians I shadowed was a young man, only a few years out from medical school. At one point, I caught a glimpse of his schedule. I saw that he was double booked for every 15-minute appointment throughout the day, with even a triple booking in one of the afternoon slots.
While it’s possible that this was an isolated incident, it’s also possible that this type of schedule is not unusual for a physician to have to manage.
There is hardly an argument against balancing efficiency and patient care. This equilibrium is essential for career satisfaction and patient outcomes. And this is true whether a physician maintains a tight, spaced-out schedule or something in between.
Therefore, I have compiled a list of the best ways physicians can navigate the tricky crossroads between delivering superlative patient care and running a successful, efficient clinic.
Leverage Technology
Medicine and technology are rapidly evolving fields. Even in the last ten years, there have been incredible advancements in both industries which would have been unthinkable a few decades earlier.
Utilizing reliable technology in medical practice is absolutely critical in this day and age. There are devices and apps that can improve diagnosis, streamline care, and enable physicians to effectively manage a busy caseload day after day.
Some of the best healthcare apps on the market include:
- Hyfe App. In the age of COVID-19 and respiratory illness, Hyfe can provide a means of safe cough analysis through the use of a Smartphone. The Hyfe app captures organic cough data from patients throughout the day, storing and analyzing this data for further interpretation by physicians.
- Kardiamobile. Kardiamobile has created a “pocket EKG”. This revolutionary device, and app, allows patients to perform an EKG examination on themselves. The device and associated app is then able to identify a host of different arrhythmias and alert patients as to the next best step based on the reading. The small pocket-sized device and the easy connectivity with smartphones make this app a huge time-saver for physicians and gives patients peace of mind that they can control more aspects of their health monitoring.
- CareClinic. The CareClinic app serves as an easy way for patients to keep track of appointments, medications, and other aspects of their health. This all-encompassing app allows patients to set reminders and alerts for important health concerns. Furthermore, the app enables patients to track symptoms and serves as a kind of “virtual health diary.”
These apps are some of the best tools available to patients. Each of them relates to a different component of health, provides a means for patients to take an active role in their healthcare, and eases the diagnostic burden for physicians.
Use Staff Effectively
When physicians can delegate a task and a qualified staff member is available to perform it, they must do so. Support staff members are invaluable additions to the clinic. In fact, without excellent support staff, clinics couldn’t accommodate nearly as many patients as they do. Beyond that, appropriate delegation by physicians seems to improve quality of care overall.
However, a hurdle that some physicians, and especially newer physicians in the field face is the unwillingness to delegate tasks. Perhaps they feel that the support staff members are overly busy, and therefore, no further items should be added to their to-do lists. Or maybe they don’t feel comfortable giving up the reins when working with a certain patient.
Whatever the reason for this hesitancy may be, doctors have very specialized and essential skills that are in high demand during busy clinic hours. Moreover, their skills are best used to diagnose and treat patients, not to perform tasks that assistants, nurses, and other providers are able to do as well.
This is not to say that a physician lending a helping hand during a rare moment of downtime is a bad thing. Rather, every situation is individual, and if a doctor has a task which only she can perform, she needs to focus her effort on that task, not on another.
Learn How and When to Use “Thin-Slicing”
In Malcolm Gladwell’s landmark book “Blink,” he discusses, at length, the concept of “thin-slicing.” Thin-slicing is a complex psychological topic, but it can be defined as the ability to sift through unnecessary details and make a quick decision.
Fictional examples of thin-slicing in action are easily found in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. In many of the novels and short stories involving the eponymous character, Sherlock is able to solve a crime after simply inspecting something seemingly innocuous, such as the suspect’s hands.
Real-world examples of thin-slicing can be found in almost every profession. In medicine, the easiest place to look for examples of thin-slicing is the emergency room. ER nurses and doctors have to make swift, important decisions regarding nearly every patient that comes in. These professionals have to look for sometimes obscure signs that will lead them toward an answer, all while dealing with tons of pressure.
But thin-slicing doesn’t have to be reserved for the emergency room or the Holmesian crime scene.
In fact, doctors in the clinic can benefit from thin slicing during their patient evaluations. The second a doctor sees a patient for the first time, she gathers a wealth of data that can lead to a diagnosis. Learning how to parse this data is a skill that comes with time and practice.
Furthermore, patients are often, for better or worse, using thin slicing when first meeting their doctors. The second a doctor comes into the exam room, the patient will begin making snap judgments about the doctor based on her demeanor, facial expressions, and various other factors.
Therefore, purposefully setting the tone for the patient meeting with a positive first impression can improve rapport with patients and may increase a patient’s trust in his or her doctor.
Ways to make a positive first impression on patients and increase their comfort during the evaluation include:
By understanding the bidirectional role that thin-slicing plays in a doctor-patient interaction, evaluations can be made more efficient and effective, leading to a happier outcome for everyone involved.
Also, it should be said that it is important to know when not to use thin slicing. Certain diagnoses take more time and effort to identify, and thin slicing should not serve as a substitute for a proper, thorough examination.
Summary
Through the appropriate use of technology, support staff, and thin-slicing, physicians can run an efficient clinic that offers sterling, patient-centered care. However, the demands of physicians are not likely to diminish any time soon. Therefore, learning how to effectively manage time while also delivering the best care possible is one of the most important balancing acts that medical providers should strive to achieve.
