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Using quality physician scheduling software
doesn’t just help your medical practice ensure all shifts are covered and that
your medical staff isn’t overworked or burned out, it also helps to reduce wait
times for your patients. Scheduling
software is an effective tool to ensure that you have doctors scheduled on
those days when wait times are historically longer, but it also helps you to
ensure that you have adequate staff on hand on any “normal” day in your medical practice.
Here is more information about how good
scheduling software can help in the waiting room of your ER department or
medical practice.
Scheduling Software Lets You Track Important
Data
The first thing you can do with your scheduling
software to help with patient wait times is to create efficiencies in physician
work schedules. Instead of just tracking when your physician's’ work, it lets
you track those times when you need to call in more medical staff to cover the
large number of patients in the waiting room.
Over time, you can begin to see trends highlighting
when the wait times tend to be worse so that you can schedule accordingly in
the future. This should hopefully cover the times when you have a lot of
patients in your office and reduce those wait times.
It is Easy to Find Doctors to Call for Emergencies
If there is an emergency or trauma in the
community and you end up with more patients in your ER waiting room than you
were anticipating, you need to call nurses and doctors as soon as possible.
Many scheduling software programs offer emergency medicine scheduling, where
you see immediately which doctors are on call, but also which doctors have the
day off that you might be able to call in during the emergency. This takes out
a lot of guesswork about who you are able to call first to come in to the
hospital or medical office.
You Are Never Short-Staffed
Being short-staffed is a common reason to have
long ER wait times. Perhaps one of your doctors called in sick and you have yet
to call in a replacement. Or, perhaps your ER ended up being busier than
expected on the first day after a long holiday weekend and you didn’t schedule
enough doctors and nurses to come in. Many of these issues are remedied just by
having physician scheduling software.
Whether you are using it for shift scheduling,
finding a physician for emergency scheduling, or simply wanting to reduce
patient wait times, the software can be an integral part of running any medical
office, practice, or hospital. Utilize it regularly and train your medical
staff and doctors to use it properly so that you get accurate tracking and
reporting. It also helps to have a program that works with smartphones so that
doctors get notice of needing to come in no matter where they are.
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