Staffing issues affect productivity

You depend on your staff to keep you productive. But, space and office layout affect the efficiency aof everyone. Two key principles should guide your planning for staff flow:

• Reducing the number of staffers needing regular face-to-face patient contact.
• Providing “focused fields” of operation for each staffer. (This means designing workstations to minimize motion—especially cutting out distractions that pull workers away from their desks.)

Divide staffers into three groups:

1) those needing frequent face-to-face patient contact
2) those who occasionally have contact
3) those who almost never interact with patients in the office.

To optimize overall flow, minimize the number of staffers needing patient contact. Limiting staff-patient interaction aids productivity by discouraging interruptions and streamlining patient flow.