If you’re running a hospital or other healthcare facility, you might struggle to find areas for improvement. On one hand, you want to improve operational efficiency. On the other, you’ll need to ensure a certain standard of medical care.
How can you balance these? Thankfully, there are multiple ways that you can go about it. While these will take time to implement, especially successfully, you should see their effects relatively quickly.
When implementing each of them, it’s worth keeping patient care in mind. While you’ll want to improve certain areas, cutting corners shouldn’t be an option. Instead, focus on areas that can be made more efficient without negatively impacting a patient.
Each of the below should do just that.
How To Make A Hospital More Efficient
Ensure Transparency
Patients and the general public are screaming out for more transparency in healthcare. That’s because they don’t like surprise billing, which often costs patients thousands of dollars after insurance.
While you mightn’t think that this would have an impact on efficiency, it does. In many cases, patients will need to negotiate payment options if a bill is too high. Done after treatment has been provided, this could prove to be an emotional and stressful process.
Getting it done in the beginning could save a lot of time and hassle. As such, you might need a revenue cycle management software for pricing transparency. That’ll let you communicate costs with patients much more effectively.
That’ll lead to time better spent elsewhere.
Focus On The Front Line
If you want to improve efficiency at a hospital, the first place you need to look at is point of care. You’ll need to determine how you can treat patients to a better standard while also decreasing patient time.
That mightn’t seem possible, although you can find a fine balance between the two. There are multiple ways that this can be done, with many making a medical professional’s job much easier. These will also help save a significant amount of time, giving them time to perform other duties.
As a result, making the front line more efficient will have positive implications elsewhere.
Be Adjustable
Sometimes, sticking to a plan can make things less efficient. If things aren’t working, then you’ll need to change them. Part of this will require getting feedback from colleagues constantly. By focusing on the people affected by changes and getting their opinions, you can adjust strategies.
These could have many more benefits than you’d expect. As such, listening to feedback and being adjustable could be vital.
Make Workstations Mobile
While medical carts have been mobile for quite some time, workstations typically aren’t. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be, however. While you’ll need to add a computer to provide doctors and nurses with a point-of-access for the hospital’s system, it can be helpful in several ways.
Alongside cutting out back and forth, this should save space and help with patient confidentiality. Since records are increasingly being made digitally, having mobile workstations could mean easier access to patient files.
That could lead to further time-saving. Coupled with other factors, this helps medical professionals to perform more tasks and see more patients during their shifts.
Improve Medication Delivery
Medication delivery can often be a tricky process. While you’ll want to do this efficiently, you’ll also need to keep medications secure. Thankfully, there are multiple ways to tackle both.
Instead of keeping medication in a centralized location, you should keep a certain amount in medical carts. Many of these come with secure drawers that nurses and other medical professionals can keep medication in.
By taking this route, you cut out the back and forth between where medication may have been kept and a patient’s room. As a result, medical professionals have more time to spend on other tasks. That cuts out a lot of time waste, which is beneficial for everybody.
Wrapping Up
Making a hospital more efficient can often seem like it’s too complicated. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, focusing on the above should keep you focused. Starting small and building up can be much more effective than you’d expect.
While you might feel as though things will need an overhaul, that won’t happen in a day. It’ll take quite a while to see all of the benefits the above offer, but you’ll start seeing them relatively soon.
Once you have some areas improved to an appropriate standard, then you can focus on other areas. You shouldn’t let things fall behind, however, but things will become much easier over time.
(Cover Image Source: Pixabay)