Traffic Jams

Can running the right reports improve workflow bottlenecks in Dr. Ben’s practice?

“Mrs. Wilson!” Pam said, looking up as Carmen came through the door.

“Did I hear you talking about me?” Carmen asked her husband playfully. “I was hoping you could come to lunch with me.”

“Dr. Ben was talking about our workflow bottlenecks,” Pam put in.

“Workflow matters,” Carmen said. “And I think you also should be talking about scalability. Naturally you pay full attention to one patient at a time, but for the sake of the practice you have to be able to look at the big picture and identify the bottlenecks in your workflow.”

Pam was silent.

“We’re speechless,” Ben said. “I’m glad to see you, of course, but I have no idea what you’re talking about right now.”

Pam darted a glance at the patients around them and welcomed a new patient. “Should we be discussing these things in front of them?” she asked quietly when she was free again.

“It’s business,” Carmen shrugged. “Your practice is growing because you give your patients excellent care. So you want to continue doing that. How could they object?”

She stepped behind the desk and looked over Pam’s shoulder. “For example, can you run a report that shows all the tasks that are coming up tomorrow and who is assigned to do them, and what tasks are still left from today?”

“Honey, I don’t think you should be–” Ben began, but Pam stopped him.

“I’ll just pull up the list of reports I can run,” she offered. “There’s no sensitive information there.”

“There sure are a lot of reports!” Carmen said, her eyes widening. “New Patients, No Shows, No Future Appointments–”

“There are lots of patient reports,” Pam agreed, scrolling down the page, “and then we also have things like Inventory, Billing, Patient Balances, Third Party Vendors…”

Ben joined them in staring at the screen. “Is that going to help us identify bottlenecks in our workflow?”

“I only run a few of them,” Pam admitted. “Mostly, I don’t really know how to set them up the way I want or how to use them once I run them. I think they’re open to interpretation, too, because sometimes they make me think we should do something but the partners don’t agree — sorry, Dr. Ben!”

“That’s okay,” he said. “I know what you mean. Often we partners don’t agree with each other, either. It’s like we’re all looking at different information.”

“Reports like these are for analysts,” Carmen said firmly, “not for doctors and nurses. You can’t expect to look at a couple hundred lines of a Tasks and Events report and see what you need to do next.”

“Plus,” Pam added, “it’s hard for me even to figure out which report to look at. If we’re talking about how smoothly the work goes, I know that a lot of the tasks we do involve multiple aspects of the practice, not just one of the things listed on those pre-made reports.”

Ben took his wife’s arm. “We’ll get out of your way now, Pam,” he said, “but thank you for your help.”

“How much time do you spend on those reports?” Carmen asked her husband as they walked.

“Hardly any,” Ben shrugged. “As Pam said, I don’t really understand how to use them. Plus, I don’t exactly have lots of free time — and I’d rather have lunch with you.”

Can running the right reports improve workflow bottlenecks in Dr. Ben’s practice?

Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.

Another blog on workflow can be found here.