The Performance Element

The Performance part of exemplary patient care will help you establish your reputation as an excellent care center. Productivity is meeting their needs; performance is doing it well. In a previous article, I discussed some points to improve the service you offer. This goes hand in hand with the quality you create. As you begin to focus on the quality of care you provide, invest time and energy into focusing on the aspects of quality care.

Important Aspects of Patient Care as perceive by the print

1. Access and Availability. Do you patients have access to you and your office when they need it? Is it easy for your patients to find your office? What are the potential obstacles your patients might have in locating your office? Are you available when most of your patients need you to be available? How long must a patient wait to get on your schedule?
2. Aesthetics, Comfort, and Cleanliness. What does your office look like? Is it up to date? Is your clinic clean? Are there any particular odors that might affect your patients? Is the waiting area tidy and tidy? Are your exam rooms spotless?
3. Concern, Empathy, and Friendliness. Do you and your staff demonstrate concern and empathy for the patient? Are you and your team friendly? How do you show your concern and compassion for the patient? What actions and words do you use as evidence of your care for them? Do your people smile? How helpful are your people? Are they patient when patients don’t understand or know what they are to do?
4. Communication. Do you communicate with your patients promptly, succinctly, and directly? Do you confirm they understand what you intended them to understand?
5. Competency. What is the skill level of your people? Are they competent in the care they provide? Do they focus on continuing education? What programs are available to them so they may stay up to date?
6. Responsiveness and Flexibility. Are you responsive to their needs? Are you able to anticipate their needs? Knowing what your patients need and want will help you accomplish this. Being flexible will also help you meets their needs. Set aside time for emergent and urgent visits. Be flexible and understanding if patients are late. Perhaps they live with other stressors. We are all human after all.

How to Pick Metrics

I’m not certain which it more difficult, picking paint colors with my wife or picking the right quality metrics for a practice. With so many different ways to slice the data, you want to be careful you choose parameters that are relevant, meaningful, and actionable. Here are a few tips to help you pick the right metrics for your practice.

1. Know Your Mission and Purpose. Your mission and purpose is the what and why you are in business. If you first define your mission and purpose, then most other business decisions become easier to make. Always begin any decision process with a review of your mission and purpose.
2. Determine What Must Happen. With the mission and purpose in mind, work backgrounds from your goals and design a process that achieves your goals. After you’ve outlined your process and know where the critical points of action are, you can begin to understand those actions that must occur.
3. Determine What Actions are Possible. Once you know the results you desire, then it’s time to determine what steps will obtain those results. You might be able to achieve the same results with a variety of different processes. The tough part is figuring out which one is the best for your budget, your people, and your patient.
4. Can the results be acted upon? Is it possible for you to affect the process and change the outcome by following this metric? If the answer is no, then perhaps it would be better to choose a different metric.
5. Is the information gained by the metric worth the cost? Everything has an opportunity cost. Many metrics incur a financial cost as well. Do those costs justify the use of this metric?
6. Will the use of this metric allow for or encourage undesirable behaviors? I’ve seen many metrics in which the people of an organization modify their behavior to reach a metric goal, but the intent of the parameter, the outcome that was desired, doesn’t happen. Take for example first case of the day surgery starts. The hospital wants their schedule to start on time so they create a metric to solve that problem. They spend a lot of time and energy tracking and generating reports. The employees work had to meet the metric but for some reason the day still doesn’t start well. That’s because they are focusing on the wrong metrics.