Ways to Increase Staff Productivity

Managing a medical practice isn’t just treating patients. It’s also working with employees.

It’s also getting the most out of these employees. How could medical practices improve productivity while keeping their employees happy and treating patients?

That’s a lot to ask, but it’s possible.

Hire the right people

Productivity starts early, during the application and hiring phases. Good hiring practices could recruit good candidates.

Not sure how to hire people? Think of people who’ve worked with you before and ask your employees to do the same.

Bringing these people in for interviews could speed up the hiring process since you’re dealing with people you or your colleagues already know and trust.

During interviews and the application process, you and your employees should trust your gut instincts. People might have skills that might look impressive on paper, but if they don’t seem that they would be a good fit in your office, don’t hire them.

Teaching skills is easier than changing personalities.

Offer extensive training

Teaching and training are good ways to boost productivity.

Consider creating onboarding and training procedures in your office to give everyone correct, extensive information when they start. You could designate certain employees as go-to resources in case new employees have questions or problems.

When your office switches procedures or experiences other changes, such as software updates, consider holding meetings or training sessions to familiarize employees with the changes.

Keeping employees updated helps them advance their skills and service the office more effectively.

Correct mistakes correctly

All the training in the world won’t prevent every mistake, of course. But how your practice handles problems could make a difference.

Address mistakes kindly and quickly. Kindly could mean addressing issues one-on-one with an employee and not in front of others. You could use language that teaches what the mistakes were and incorporates the proper ways to fix any errors and complete tasks.

Prompt acknowledgement of mistakes is also necessary. When you acknowledge them after they happen, the person making the mistake sees their errors and their impact. They could then have a better chance of resolving them with less impact.

Not addressing problems quickly could make a small problem grow even larger, creating more problems that could be more difficult to remedy.

Provide rewards

Celebrating employees’ success is just as important as helping them during challenges.

By rewarding employees for doing their jobs well, you’re recognizing all they do for your practice. This recognition could encourage their loyalty and sustain them during difficult times.

Employee rewards could also include offering attractive salaries and benefits. While these incentives might initially be expensive, if they retain seasoned employees from leaving (and requiring you to participate in hiring and training processes that take time and money), this could be money well spent.

Encourage and incorporate employee feedback

Recognizing employees is also acknowledging their ideas.

Consider adding a suggestion box in your office. Employees could add their anonymous suggestions, complaints, or questions to this box.

Remind employees that they won’t be punished or criticized for statements they submit to the suggestion box or say out loud. Encouraging such in-person face-to-face feedback is a hallmark of an open-door policy that you might also want to adopt.

Like acknowledging mistakes, discussing problems early could prevent them from worsening. Or, if employees have ideas, talking about them could lead to brainstorming situations that could improve the office and help employees feel seen and heard.

Incorporating employee ideas gives them agency, helping them feel as if they’re creating their work culture.

Trust employees

Giving employees agency is trusting them.

Trust is important in an office. By having opportunities to develop ideas and lead, employees will feel like valuable members of a team, not subordinates whose sole purpose it is to follow.

Extending trust also relates to supervision. Since it’s your office, it might be tempting to want to control every single aspect of its operations, but that’s counterproductive.

Micromanaging could lead to burnout for you and resentment from employees. If they feel that their bosses don’t have any faith in them, workers may wonder what they’re doing. They might question their work ethic or even leave their positions entirely.

So, instead of trying to produce high-quality work, micromanaging ultimately causes more work for everyone.

Integrate software systems

In addition to letting employees handle their responsibilities themselves, incorporating software systems could also save your office some work.

Combining many of these digital solutions is especially helpful. Electronic health record (EHR) software serves as digital versions of patients’ charts. They’re comprehensive records of patients’ health, treatments, and dates of important occurrences.

As its name indicates, practice management (PM) software helps people handle the myriad tasks required for running a medical office.

When medical offices use digital solutions that combine EHR and PM systems, they have the best of both worlds. They’re able to add, store, and access information in their EHRs and use PMs to remind patients of their appointments and even help them schedule such arrangements.

Integrating different software systems also helps offices financially because it creates accurate documentation that could lead to more correct insurance claims and has the capability to track bills.

Using the information on these systems could also help offices generate reports that monitor how they’re doing and suggest ways they could improve. The right software, then, could make a difference for an office.

Involve patients

Software could engage your patients as well as your medical colleagues.

Digital solutions that harness the capabilities of EHR and PM systems enable patients to access their information through patient portals, schedule appointments, and even pay bills.

Such portals also enable you and your patients to talk with you. They give patients ways to ask questions or air concerns that might not be able to wait until their next appointments. They also provide areas where you can share your own thoughts about their health or your practice as a whole.

For additional assistance to aid your practice, you might want to consider the services of Eye Care Leaders. We’ll help you explore digital solutions to improve your practice and its business.