As the U.S. population ages, you may find your home health agency getting busier. Your clinicians, caregivers, and administrative staff are stretched thin as they balance daily tasks with high-quality patient care. It’s tempting to add more team members and give your team some relief.
But hiring without addressing your workflow management practices isn’t treating the underlying problem. Without process visibility, your team could still end up overworked and burnt out. Before posting that job listing, examine your operational practices to identify improvements.
Operating without a connected electronic health records (EHR) platform that integrates with other software is a common challenge. When your systems aren’t connected, team members have to log into multiple systems to find the documents they need, including physician orders and patient charts.
Whether you’re working with an outdated system or you’re still doing everything on paper, your team is spending time tracking down paperwork. Disjointed systems also complicate patient handoffs. Unclear handoffs delay patient care. Your administrative team has to call or email the referring physician to get missing information or interpret unclear referrals. While your staff is busy gathering information, your patient is waiting to start treatment.
Relying on manual processes and disconnected technology also causes your team to duplicate efforts. They have to enter the same data into multiple systems, which is time-consuming and tedious.
If you’re hiring new people to manage a higher workload without fixing your operational processes, you’re essentially throwing money away. Each new hire increases your payroll budget. It’s worthwhile if the new hires are easing stress on other clinicians, caregivers, and staff.
But unclear processes and ineffective systems are one of the main causes of new employee turnover. Mismanaged and outdated systems lead to higher workloads and more job-related stress. New hires get frustrated when they can’t provide quality patient care because of system-related delays and errors. Your long-term team members can also feel the burnout from ineffective processes.
Each time you lose a new hire, you have to spend more money to replace them.
Before you rush to hire new people, step back and assess your workflows. If mapping out processes in your whole home health or hospice agency seems overwhelming, break it into smaller pieces. Assess each workflow separately, such as:
Map every step of each process from start to finish. Identify who is involved in each step of the process and note the technological systems in use. Measure how long it takes to complete each step in the process. Make a list of the resources you need for each process.
For example, during the medication management process, you might use electronic prescriptions or barcodes. Some of your clinicians may ask their home health patients to use wearable devices to transmit vital signs and other important data.
Once you’ve mapped all your processes and collected data, identify the places where delays happen most often. Note where people are doing manual work that could be automated. Identify any duplicate tasks and other unnecessary steps.
As you identify your inefficiencies, you can develop strategies to improve team productivity. Consider operations hiring, where you hire experienced administrators to manage and oversee your processes. Sometimes, an outside perspective will help you see what’s not working as well as it could.
Sometimes a heavy workload means you need to assess your operations. Other times, you actually do need to hire new people. If you’re trying to decide which option is right for you, look at your profits versus workload. When your staff is always busy but your revenue isn't growing, check your operational processes before recruiting.
Next, examine your clinicians’ workloads. If you have access to the data, benchmark your agency against your competitors or industry standards. When your clinicians are spending more time on administrative work than seeing patients, you may need to improve operations.
Assess each department independently. One department that is consistently overwhelmed signals a need for improvement in that area.
If your revenue is growing or you’re turning patients down, but your staff is managing their workloads, it’s time to hire.
Implementing new, interconnected systems is a common way to fix your operations. WorldView’s workflow automation solutions will save your team from manual paperwork and processes.
Physician Order Tracking is a fully automated tracking system that automatically faxes orders to physicians while making an electronic record. This system also updates order statuses in real time. Your team can stay on top of each order and start caring for patients faster.
MedAttach is a medical records management solution that improves communication and patient handoff. This system lets your team automatically capture and upload documents and patient data. The system categorizes and routes each document for an easily accessible, complete patient file.
Learn more about how we can help you with your operational workflows by scheduling a demo today.