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Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Break Glass and Pull Lever in the event of an emergency
We’ve all seen fire alarms that ask you to break the glass and pull the lever. But what do you do in a computer emergency? That would depend on what went wrong and what things you need to get back on track as soon as possible. In this scenario one would set into motion a contingency plan, if you have one. The contingency plan is dependent on whether you took time during good times to have something to fall back on. In this article we will discuss the plans you need to have in place for emergency situations.
Let us take a step back. The only way you can have a contingency plan is if you have the proper equipment and take the time to use. What is the proper equipment? Did you know, MOHLTC technical staff suggests that you have a 3.5” floppy drives in your new computer even if you submit claims via EDT? Nowadays, computer manufacturers are removing certain devices like 3.5” floppy drives and conventional modems, replacing them with different types of drives and connection devices. This will continue to happen as the industry researches and develops new components and peripherals that are more efficient. Nevertheless, whether you use the technology or not it’s strongly recommended you have them. Since MOHLTC stipulates the medium and path for you to submit your claims, it’s always good to start with them to determine your minimum requirements. You can then speak with a computer professional to see what else is recommended. The backup process is a great example. Some people have chosen to use an automated tape backup and depending on the level of technology in your office, this may be best suited to you. However, if you computer is a few years old and the backup device is designed to work on older operating systems, you may not be able to use or take the technology forward if you have a crash or have to replace your hardware. What do you do if the manufacturer doesn’t produce that product anymore or if the manufacturer is no longer in business? What do you do if the device doesn’t work with your new operating system? Of course, if everything works, then you are in luck. If not, you will have nothing to show from you contingency plan. As technology rolls on, and our dependency on the equipment grows, we tend to take things for granted. We rely on modems and phone lines, believing that it will always work, that upgrading hardware or software will not affect anything in our existing set up, our computer will work trouble free for many years (not withstanding user error), and our staff will always be there to do the little things that need to be done. But that one instance when things don’t go our way, it can certainly be a huge inconvenience.
To help yourself you must provide your own safety net. Software and hardware companies can only help you if you have taken the proper precautions, so please be sure you have the following:
1. 3.5” floppy drives and disks.
2. Daily backups to work with.
3. Ensure that your existing office technology can be used with today’s current technology market.
By taking care of these issues, you will be in a better position to overcome emergencies.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
The Efficient Handling of Patient Records
The efficient handling of patient records within a medical office can have far-reaching effects on many areas of the practice, including telephone management and physician and staff management. Few medical offices in Canada are entirely paperless, although numbers are growing annually, so it is still the majority of offices that need to tighten up their record management systems. Many years ago, I was called into an office to help improve staff telephone management. The office received numerous complaints from callers who constantly reached busy signals, or were put on hold for anywhere up to 10 or 12 minutes. Several patients transferred to other doctors because they found it impossible to get through to the office to make appointments. Other patients became no-shows when they couldn’t get through to cancel an appointment.
On interviewing the staff and observing what was happening at the front desk, I realized that the main culprit here was a badly managed record system rather than poor telephone management. Charts were often not where they should be – in the filing system. Completed chats sat in piles in the reception area waiting to be filed. Doctors took charts home with them to write progress notes, or left them in any one of a dozen different places within the office. Thus, when a phone call generated the need to find information from a chart, the phone lines were tied up as the staff put the caller on hold to search for the chart. Staff spent an unacceptable portion of each day hunting for charts when they should have been completing other work, and doctors’ time was wasted as they often had to delay returning telephone calls – or even seeing patients – until a chart had been found. General inefficiency pervaded every area of office productivity, and in nearly every instance this could be traced back at some level to poor chart management. I always recommend that no chart should be out of the system for more than twenty-four hours whether they have been completed or not. Physicians should get into the habit of writing or dictating their progress notes at the end of each patient visit. Not only does this help get the chart back into the system, but it takes a lot less time to write notes when the information is still fresh than it does to write notes after seeing dozens of patients. Doctors should never remove a chart from the office to complete at home without a proper tracking system in place to ensure that the whereabouts of the chart are known to staff.
Staff, too, must take their share of responsibility for ensuring charts are where they should be – in the filing system – and abide by the ‘twenty-four hour rule’ to return them. If the chart isn’t completed at the end of the day (e.g. an insurance for or medical/legal letter is needed) the chart should still be returned to its proper place on the shelf or in the cabinet, with a log kept up to date of work that has yet to be done. I have visited hundred of offices over the past 25 years as a Practice Management Consultant and unfortunately have found that there are still far too many physicians and staff who don’t afford the proper degree of importance to their charts and filing systems. Patient charts should be considered the heart of a practice, and without a high level of efficiency in this area overall office productivity suffers, and doctors are unable to provide consistently excellent patient care.
(This article first appeared in The Practice Manager, a newsletter published by Don Price & Associates.)
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Note: All issues from the year 2000 are provided in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). To view these files, you need to have Adobe Acrobat® Reader installed on your computer. You can download this free software from the Adobe Web site.
Edited on: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 2:01 PM
Categories: Medical Office Practice Management
Monday, March 01, 2004
The Ever Changing Practice
How do you know your patients? We're not talking about their diseases and injuries, or even their names, but about the types of people who make up your practice. Almost every aspect of running your practice will be enhanced by having a good knowledge of who your patients are. If your patients are mostly middle class professionals, your scheduling problems will be very different from those of a colleague whose patients are mostly seniors. If you have a preponderance of young families with babies and school age children, you may find that your time management has to take into account a daily number of lengthy phone calls, which might not be a problem for another doctor whose patient base encompasses many new immigrant patients who prefer to see the doctor rather than make phone calls.
Few general practices today maintain a stable patient demographic base over the long term. The population from which you draw your patients can and probably will change over time, and one day you may become aware that you are seeing more demanding patients than you used to, or have a higher number of patients calling in to ask for prescription refills. Your staff may complain of more no-shows or more walk-ins.
Ignoring the problems in the hopes that they will go away isn't the solution. What has to be done is to analyze what changes have occurred in your patient base over the past few years that may have caused the problems you are now encountering.
(This article first appeared in The Practice Manager, a newsletter published by Don Price & Associates.)
Click here to read the entire article in publication
Click here to view other Softwords publications
Note: All issues from the year 2000 are provided in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). To view these files, you need to have Adobe Acrobat® Reader installed on your computer. You can download this free software from the Adobe Web site.
Edited on: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 1:38 PM
Categories: Medical Office Practice Management