Keep ’em talking to boost efficiency
July 1, 1999
Keep ’em talking to boost efficiency
Communication gets everyone on board
For a physician’s office to run smoothly, it’s not enough for people to just concentrate on doing their jobs, says Jeannette Perich, CPA. Instead, all staff must work together and understand how what they do affects the rest of the staff, says Perich, administrator of the Fort Collins (CO) Youth Clinic. The practice has a staff of 63, including eight physicians, four mid-level providers, and laboratory personnel.
Along with customer service for patients, Perich stresses internal customer service among staff members to ensure that the service delivery system works smoothly. The clinic has implemented a series of strategies to promote better communication among staff members.
These include regular meetings at which staff share knowledge and ideas, and using flowcharts as a communication tool to allow individuals to see the impact of their actions on the rest of the operations. "So many times, people get caught in their own little area and don’t realize the impact they have on other people," Perich says.
That’s why Perich uses flowcharts to give the staff an idea of how the business systems work and how their part fits into the entire process. "We were looking at processes and trying to see where bottlenecks happen in the practice. It’s helpful for the staff to see where they fit in," she says. For instance, one creation, "Life Cycle of a Fee Sheet," tracks the path of the fee sheet from the time a patient is scheduled for an appointment through the time the account is paid.
"This helped the people at the front desk understand that if we don’t have good demographic information and good insurance information, we can’t bill out. Our staff has a better understanding of the whole picture and how the entire process works," Perich adds.
For instance, by studying the flowchart, employees can see how benefits are sometimes denied because the patients are no longer covered by a certain plan, Perich says. "Then we have to start all over again and resubmit the claim, and this is bad for the cash flow," she adds.
Another flowchart traces telephone calls, how they are routed, and what decisions need to be made to route the calls. Another tracks the patient visit and details who comes in contact with the patients and how their actions affect the patients.
Off-the-shelf software
For the fee sheet project, Perich started the process by asking a staff person to write the entire process of how a fee sheet moves through the practice. After the process was written down, she went back to each member of the staff who handles the fee sheet to make sure it was correct. Then she used an off-the-shelf flowchart software program to create a document that was easily understandable to the staff. "Putting it in flowchart form makes it much easier to read. People get turned off by long narratives, and they tend not to read them," Perich says.
She meets once a week with all the managers in the office. This includes managers in the business office, nursing, lab, and transcription areas. The entire staff meets for lunch once a month. "We talk about what we need from other staff people and what they need from us in order to do their jobs well. This all ties into communications and customer service," Perich says.
Giving staff an opportunity to communicate regularly has been "a tremendous help" in ensuring the office runs smoothly, Perich adds. For instance, recently one staff member proposed making a change in his department and didn’t think it would make a difference to the rest of the staff. "As soon as it was mentioned, about four people here spoke up about how it would impact their departments," she says.
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