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Even though a person may have a primary care physician, when a medical emergency strikes, many Americans head to the emergency room of their local hospital to seek treatment. However, because the cost of treatment at urgent care clinics is significantly less than the cost of a visit to an emergency room, many American’s are choosing urgent care clinics over ERs. The cost, coupled with the overcrowding and long wait times, makes urgent care clinics much more desirable to those who require medical care.
If you are the manager of an emergency department, the last thing you want to do is lose your patients to an urgent care clinic. How can you avoid losing patients? One effective way is to utilize physician scheduling software to improve the schedules of your emergency room doctors.
How can shift scheduling software prevent you from losing patients to urgent care clinics? Here’s a look.
Create More Effective Schedules
It can be difficult to create an ER physician schedule. There are so many doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who work in this setting, and it can be hard to juggle and attend to all of their needs. Emergency medicine scheduling software can make your scheduling efforts more effective by ensuring that all shifts are covered, and that all of the needs of your faculty are met.
Reduce Patient Wait Times
Part of the reason why patient wait times are so long in hospital emergency rooms is because there aren’t enough doctors on staff. By using shift scheduling software, you can ensure that the emergency department is properly staffed, which will significantly reduce wait times for patients. The more doctors that are actively on staff, the quicker patients can be treated, which will greatly speed up the wait times.
Improve Patient Satisfaction
Patient satisfaction isn’t only reliant on the care that they receive; the service they receive plays a huge part in their satisfaction. By using emergency medicine scheduling software, you can effectively improve patient satisfaction. How? - Because patients will receive more customized care in a quicker and more efficient manner; all things that are directly linked to their happiness and their overall experience with the emergency department.
Improve Your Hospital’s Emergency Department Reputation
The reputation of a hospital’s emergency department can sway patients. If the ER department has a poor reputation with long wait times, poor treatment and doctors who lack bedside manner, patients will be more inclined to skip the ER and head to the urgent care clinic when they require treatment. Physician scheduling software can help to improve the reputation of your hospital’s ER department by improving job satisfaction of your faculty, reducing wait times, and improving the treatment that patients receive.
Don’t let urgent care clinics take your patients out of your ER; use emergency medicine scheduling software and you’ll keep your patients in your ER.
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