c-suite monitor€¦ · dashboards detailing important data, like fill ratios and time-to-fill...
TRANSCRIPT
A Newsletter Dedicated to Providing Innovative Staffing Solutions for Healthcare Leaders
Q4|2019C-Suite Monitor
5 TIPS TO ELIMINATENO-SHOWS AT YOUR PRACTICE
HOW’S YOUR DIGITAL FRONT DOOR STRATEGY?
HEALTHCARE LEADERS:COVER MULTIPLE SPECIALTIES WITH ONE SOLUTION
PLUS
Did You Know?• Hiring 101
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Table of Contents
features
Healthcare Leaders: Cover Multiple Specialties with One Solution
5 Tips to Eliminate No-Shows at Your Practice
How’s Your Digital Front Door Strategy?
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ResourcesDid you know?Tips for healthcare leaders
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Healthcare Leaders: Cover Multiple Specialties with One Solution
Healthcare leaders often struggle to manage day-to-day operations and focus on more important tasks, like
planning future initiatives and strategy.
Instead of enlisting multiple companies to cover scheduling gaps, there’s a full-service solution for your needs. By working with one company that takes full responsibility for your schedule and manages with your
organizational goals in mind, you can eliminate a lot of stress and headaches.
Partnering with Medicus Healthcare Solutions (Medicus) generates a solutions-based approach and grants access to medicusIQ℠. This customized portal provides visibility for your schedule, coverage, providers and, most importantly, Medicus’ performance. Through one
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touchpoint, you can review contracts, invoices, and access reporting and dashboards detailing important data, like fill ratios and time-to-fill statistics. Medicus strives to maintain transparency and exemplary communication, creating an extension of your existing team with strategies that are tailored to your unique challenges.
To explore one hospital’s success with medicusOne®, a service that combines the benefits of using a managed service provider and the services of a vendor management system, check out this case study:
Metropolitan Group Expands with Ensured Staffing PartnershipHospital Profile: A group from New York managing 20 hospital medicine and ED contracts required a strategic partner to grow its portfolio of business and attract and retain physicians to fully staff expansion.
Client Scenario: The group relied on Medicus to help support their growth in a New York metropolitan area and entrusted Medicus to design a strategy that would:
Develop and support the acquisition of new contractsImplement supplemental coverage and help permanently staff the facility with high-quality providers
The Medicus Solution: Medicus engaged with the group as they absorbed a new contract and implemented a strategic plan to simultaneously gain additional contracts and full coverage. This customized solution included:
Aligning with the group to fully understand the vision of the program and its strategic initiativesGuiding expansion in a metropolitan area, a location in which the group was unfamiliarBuilding a clinical team that exceeded quality expectationsSupporting the facility partner on-site throughout the launch and meeting the physicians to ensure a smooth transition
Results: Medicus’ collaborative efforts allowed the facility to efficiently meet its goals and experience a successful program launch. Additionally, this partnership created opportunities for the facility to continue expansion. The Medicus solution:
Nurtured a relationship with the group as the single point of contact, narrowed hospital resources, and helped focus recruitment effortsProvided two leads per quarter to states with significant growth potentialFacilitated continuous coverage over the course of the launchCreated a 100 percent fill ratio with an exceptional team of physiciansDeveloped a long-term partnership with the facility and delivered leads that are currently in the RFP process; two additional sites launched in summer 2019
To learn more about the medicusOne® solution and how it can help your facility, call 603.288.1527 to request a complimentary consultation today.
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5 Tips to Eliminate no-shows at your Practice
Has your practice ever been stood up? The answer is probably “yes.” People fail to show up for appointments for
a variety of reasons: lack of transportation, desire to avoid long wait times, lack of medical literacy, and language barriers. Then, there are the standard offenders who simply forget they made the appointment in the first place. No matter the cause, people who skip scheduled time with a provider not only sacrifice needed medical care, but also cause their clinician’s practice or facility to lose revenue.
If you’re a manager, administrator, or other healthcare leader, you may be searching for a way to curb this behavior. Below, we share five tips to eliminate patient no-shows. You may find some to be a better fit for your practice, hospital, or clinic. However, using a combination of these strategies should lead to improvements in patient health and satisfaction as well as fewer no-shows at your organization.
Remind your patients about their appointments—frequently A simple method for improving your
no-show rate is to inquire about patients’ communication preferences prior to scheduling their appointments. Do they prefer texts or emails? Phone calls? Consider incorporating automated reminders via their favorite communication channel.
Now, you can easily provide patients with swift and thoughtful reminders. Many patients regard these communications to be helpful for either remembering they made an appointment or remembering to reschedule.
Provide timely access to carePatients don’t like waiting. High wait times can have a great impact on satisfaction
and cause some patients to skip an appointment, particularly if they have back-to-back appointments.
Patients who are punctual typically expect to be seen on time. Although the best solution is to limit (or eliminate) the issue, sometimes it’s unavoidable. When patients are kept waiting, there are things you can do to ease their exasperation, such as offering a sincere apology; telling them how long they can expect to wait; giving them the option to see another provider more quickly, if one is available; and providing a comfortable waiting area with a TV, complimentary snacks and beverages, and/or Wi-Fi.
Thoroughly assess the appointment time and make appropriate adjustments, if you can. Consider collecting patient information when a patient schedules the appointment instead of gathering it when the patient arrives. And, most importantly, try to make sure you’re fully staffed to manage your daily census. Consider adding more physicians or advanced practitioners to your team and/or using locum tenens staffing services to meet the needs of an influx of patients—during flu season—or when members of your permanent staff take vacation or maternity/paternity leave.
Keep an eye on the no-showsTracking the number of patients who miss their appointments and informing
your staff is prudent. This includes everyone in the process of what to look for and ways to improve the problem.
Depending on the information you document, you also can establish which strategies work best for your organization, if there are a greater number of no-shows at certain times of the year (and if so, why), and more. Capturing these details and using data to resolve “appointment obstacles” can help you brainstorm additional solutions, enhance communication between staff and patients, and improve patient-provider relationships, all of which strengthen patients’ commitment to your practice or facility.
Coordinate appointment transportationUnfortunately, 3.6 million Americans miss
medical appointments annually due to lack of transportation. While having a reliable way to get to their doctor’s office or healthcare facility impacts many throughout the United States, those who experience the greatest challenges are people residing in rural or underserved areas as well as vulnerable populations, particularly those living with a chronic disease.
To address this important issue, on-demand driver services have created platforms to help healthcare providers arrange non-emergency medical transportation to and from their offices or facilities for patients in need of rides. The technology used meets HIPAA standards, and the types of services offered include flexible scheduling; simple billing, reporting, and management; real-time ride status updates; and access for patients who do not own a smartphone.
Support and provide thorough patient educationAlthough missed appointments might not
seem like a big deal to a patient, they could be a crucial step in preventive care. Make sure your physicians are on board, and work to create a practice or hospital that helps empower patients.
Inform patients of the significance of honoring their appointments and how to appropriately cancel or reschedule if they are unable to make them. Send well-timed reminders before an appointment, have tough conversations during appointments, make no-show follow-up calls, and employ a system of multi-lingual signs at the clinic. Then, provide staff members with scripts to ensure they not only know what to say, but how to phrase it. Using these approaches at your healthcare organization can help your facility be a partner in patient care.
Call Medicus Healthcare Solutions at 855.301.0563 for assistance with your locum tenens staffing requirements, as well as your project and resource management and transitions needs, and read our blog for helpful information and insights.
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When you need to hire a physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or CRNA for your practice or facility, it usually needs to happen ASAP. While you want to find top-tier candidates for the job, you still must minimize disruptions in the interim, keeping your hospital or medical facility running smoothly. Below are six savvy tips to help fine-tune your hiring strategy and minimize turnover at your healthcare organization.
Did you know?
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Craft excellent job descriptions.
Highlight your organization’s culture and values as well as
what a candidate could expect if he or she were part of your team.
Consider hiring from within.
A member of your internal staff could be qualified, a good culture fit, and
interested in the position!
Go live!Once you review and refine the job description, upload the posting to your website
or job board.
Partner with a reputable locum staffing company.
Working with an established agency simplifies your
recruiting efforts and helps you meet critical coverage needs in a timely manner.
Ask for employee referrals.
Employees are a great resource and may know a clinician who would be a
perfect fit.
Remember, time is of the essence.
Exceptional candidates are a hot commodity; they do not remain available for long.
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How’s Your Digital Front Door Strategy?
First impressions are everything. Now that healthcare is becoming more consumer-focused, it’s vital to consider the ease of
the patient journey. As millennials begin to surpass baby boomers in numbers, it’s even more important to analyze their expectations for patient care.
You might be familiar with the buzzword “digital front door,” but what does that phrase really mean? It’s your strategy for engaging each touchpoint of your patients’ online user experience with technology they already use. Instead of relying on one vehicle for communication, a strong digital front door strategy capitalizes on a variety of technology points to drive patient satisfaction and increase revenue.
Like anything, it’s all about access and ease of use. Although the digital front door encompasses patient portals, it focuses on
the technology that your patients already use. Much like your facility’s patient flow, which we addressed in a previous blog, your digital front door strategy is worth analyzing and perfecting.
Unfortunately, you’re not just competing with other hospitals. Instead, you’re competing with huge, service-related companies, like Amazon, which capitalize on convenience. Your patients seek the same intuitive online experience in healthcare. And they’re probably not getting it.
Patients don’t understand why it’s so difficult to make an appointment, pay their bills, or access their medical records. They can perform similar tasks quite simply on a variety of other platforms. More than likely, a Google search and a click on your website are the first two windows your potential patient has to your health system or facility. So, how do you make the experience worth opening the door?
Easy site navigationPatients could be headed to your site for a few different reasons. They may want to call your facility, make an appointment, or pay a bill.
Much like the patient flow at your facility, make sure these common steps are visible and easily accessible on the front page of your website. Don’t make your users fight to access care. Easy fixes, like linking your
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telephone number to a button allows your patient to tap once and speak with someone instead of trying to find a pen and paper, write the number down, and then punch it into their phone. This simple fix eliminates the number of steps they must take, especially if they’re trying to make a call on the go.
Provider and pricing transparencyPatients are seeking content they can trust. By publishing patient testimonials, facility awards, and provider profiles, your facility can garner trust and build relationships with your patient populations.
Since price transparency is becoming a hot button topic, hospitals and health systems are building their pages to enable users to price compare, much like other consumer transactions. AtriumHealth, for example, creates a clear landing page with minimal clicks, allowing patients to select the best care option. This is the user experience your patients are craving.
Do it yourself scheduling, registration, and paymentsPeople don’t want to use their lunchbreak to wrestle with their phone, be placed on hold, and try to coordinate an appointment. If patients manage to find a few minutes for a phone call, they might not have their calendar right in front of them. Once they take time off for an appointment, it’s frustrating to spend precious time filling out paperwork instead of being seen. Then, after the experience is over, they want to pay for their medical care quickly and conveniently, like any other bill.
So, how can these frustrations be fixed? Develop online self-scheduling, mobile pre-registration/check-in, and easy online bill pay. Think minimal clicks. Remember, your digital front door strategy does not rely on a patient portal. In fact, portal adoption remains an issue for its inherent inconvenience. Patients are unlikely to download another clunky application; they want their services well designed, easily accessible, and a place to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
Automated remindersWhen you see new patients, inquire about their communication preferences. As you begin to tweak your digital front door strategy, you can include this question in the initial registration. Then, whether a patient prefers text, emails, or phone calls, be sure to set up automated reminders that honor these preferences.
Opening the doorIt’s important to keep up with the everchanging healthcare landscape. As you drive a successful digital front door strategy, you begin to build strong foundation that can positively impact your patient volume, market share, and bottom line.
Although it’s a complex journey, these few steps help you assess your strategy. As you continue to reshape your digital front door, consider checking in with your patients to see how you’re doing—that gesture will go a long way and provide even more feedback to help shape your plan.
Learn how Medicus Healthcare Solutions can help you maintain continuity of care and increase your patient base at your practice or facility by calling 855.301.0563 and speaking with a knowledgeable business development executive.
