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The emergency department (ER) is a complex center. Taking in and discharging patients and physicians and other health professionals needs to be top-notch and error-free. Herein lies the problem – knowing how to efficiently schedule physicians and then knowing when it's time to adjust or change it. After all, nothing lasts forever. Here are seven symptoms that tell you it's time to get emergency scheduling software installed in your clinic offices.
1) Scheduling Mistakes
Emergency medicine scheduling software offers several benefits, including fair and equitable scheduling in a user-friendly format. Patient care is more effective and timelier when ER staff members communicate precisely and quickly. One component of the patient satisfaction challenge is having fair and equitable emergency medicine scheduling software.
But when physicians keep bumping into each other's schedules, and there are notable absences and increased patient wait times, then something is wrong. Act fast – do not waste precious time and money.
2) Physician Burnout
Yes. Physicians burn out, too, not just vehicle tires. And it is one of the most feared conditions in the medical community, even though it is widespread. The only reason for physician burnout is high work time, or inversely, less downtime/free time. A jump in the rate of physician burnout isn't good news and should be monitored and discontinued.
3) Physician Overtime Increasing
Bringing in locum tenens physicians or adding overtime to recruit physicians happens once in a while, especially in the summer and other holiday periods. But a more than expected increase in this strategy will result in an unwanted and unplanned growth in expenditure. Investigating and rooting out its cause will help stabilize and improve finances.
4) Lack of Physician Scheduling Flexibility
This might result from not having enough physicians and other healthcare staff available for scheduling or an error on the part of the software. It could also mean that physicians have been left out of the availability list, thus resulting in a reduced availability list. However, the case might be, you know it's time to adjust your software settings.
5) Last-Minute Schedule Scrambling
After the hours spent shift scheduling, it's time to distribute staff. As soon as you save the final version, change requests start popping in, in all formats - text messages, media messages, emails, you name it. One change can interrupt and overwhelm the schedule for an entire week. This is where emergency medicine scheduling software comes in. However, constant, incessant changes could lead to software glitches and errors. Operating and misusing the software can also cause this. (a staff member can make the changes yourself without asking you to). Shift trading can be done on a separate software page and then integrated into the main physician scheduling software interface.
6) Increasing Patient Wait Times
More patients sitting in the reception? Longer wait times point to the fact that physicians aren't working enough – or even at all. It also points out irregularities in physician scheduling and work time. Go back to your emergency medicine scheduling software and draw an inference from your analysis to find out who's being overworked (again) and who's playing hooky.
7) Decreasing Profits
What's a business without profit? Exactly. Decreasing profits mean something – you aren't taking care of patients fast enough. And this goes back to poor shift scheduling. Diagnose (no pun intended) your physician scheduling for inefficiencies, and make the necessary changes.
Emergency physician scheduling software enables you to work smarter, not harder.
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