Automating the Scheduling Process
Implementing an electronic scheduling system could improve your practice’s efficiency as well as reaffirm patients’ views of your reliability.
For today’s small medical practices, an appointment book is one of the most critical instruments you and your staff members use every day. How efficiently you manage your schedule can dramatically impact how patients view the quality of care and professionalism of your practice. Finding the right scheduling system not only can keep your practice running smoothly, but it also can confirm for patients the high quality of care you provide.
“Scheduling is the most important task in a medical office next to providing care,” says Keith Borglum, a health care business consultant based in Santa Rosa, Calif. “It’s the scheduler who affects triage of the practice, meaning which patients should be sent to the emergency room instead of scheduling an appointment, who should come in today and who can come in next week or sometime in the future.”
In fact, Borglum, who is certified by the National Society of Certified Healthcare Business Consultants, says that scheduling can have critical implications for the patient’s health. If someone calls complaining of crushing chest pain and shortness of breath — common symptoms of a heart attack — the staff member who maintains the schedule may be responsible for providing life-saving instructions that direct patients to the emergency room rather than scheduling an appointment with his or her doctor. Failing to do so could create serious liability issues for a medical practice, Borglum says.
Getting your house in order. Despite the increased likelihood of mistakes being made when scheduling appointments by hand, Borglum says that the vast majority of practices today still rely on their staff to maintain their schedules. Yet without an adequate system in place — particularly in offices with several doctors or specializations — additional errors can occur when relaying the information to appropriate staff members long after it’s initially recorded.
Stay cognizant of changing technological mandates. Borglum says that five or six years ago there were roughly 1,500 different practice management (PM) software programs — a subset of which is scheduling — available to doctors. Today, he says, that figure has dwindled down to about 600. This drastic decrease, according to Borglum, came after Medicare mandated electronic claims submission. “This mandate wiped out a lot of little software companies that weren’t willing to make the investment to change their PM software,” he says.
Borglum predicts additional shifts in the medical industry away from other outdated practices. “The next big phase that we’re facing is electronic medical records,” he says. By 2015, Medicare is expected to begin requiring the use of electronic medical records in order for practices to be reimbursed, which means that PM software will eventually include scheduling functions, as well as those required to produce electronic medical records. To be safe, Borglum advises his clients to exercise caution when choosing PM software to implement into their practice. Another reason to choose carefully, he says, is because of cost. He estimates that a quality PM software system geared toward a small practice’s needs could cost between $15,000 and $20,000 per doctor.
Go local. Although it is not yet mandatory, many organizations within the medical industry have already made the move to PM software that enables the transfer of electronic medical records. So you should inquire with medical associations and specialty societies in your region about which software they’ve endorsed. If a large portion of your colleagues uses a particular system, you should consider adopting it as well. Otherwise, you could face complications when transferring medical records between systems that are not compatible.
Learning the ropes. If you decide to transition to an automated scheduling system, beware of purchasing one that’s too complicated for your staff to easily and quickly navigate. A good scheduling system can be taught in a matter of hours. Michael Yaitanes, director of the Loma Linda University Health Care (LLUHC) customer care center located in Loma Linda, Calif., says that their software allows staff to focus on the patient instead of the computer screen.
“Focusing too much on the technology distracts you from serving the patient to the utmost,” Yaitanes says. He says that before LLUHC moved to its new scheduling system, it used one that took four to five days of classroom-like training to grasp. The new system, which resembles and functions like a series of Web pages, only takes two to four hours to master. “If you have a really complex piece of software, and it takes a long time to [teach] someone how to use it, you don’t appear as competent or confident to your patients as you should.”
Information is currency. Give strong consideration to PM software that is customizable and can be leveraged in tandem with other software, such as the ability to link scheduling systems with database or billing systems. “Right now, information is another form of currency,” Yaitanes says. “Making sure that your systems can all be integrated and share information is very important.”
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