Improving physician office productivity by improving office processes

Carefully reviewing, analyzing, and revising office processes can yield an improvement in office productivity - I've seen it many times. For maximum effectiveness, gather your team to conduct the analysis. Include all staff who participate in, observe, or are affected by each process you want to examine. Then follow these steps:

1. Choose the process to analyze - Start with the simple processses first is my recommendation.

2. Determine the reasons and objectives for the process - Why does the process exist?

3. Write down the process's current steps - I like flowcharting at this step; account for what each person does in the process.

4. Examine each step individually - Find the inefficiencies; does each step contribute to the process's goal?

5. Review the revised process - Do you need to add additional steps maybe? Are any steps "error-prone"?

6. Repeat step 5 until satisfied - Then move on to the next process.

The analysis above isn't especially difficult to perform - the hardest part is finding the time and discipline to actually do it!!