Physician Practices: A Judicious Mix of Human Resources and IT

While physicians’ competence will forever remain pivotal to excellence in patient care, the auxiliary services – on duty nurses, para-medical staff, and administrative staff – which ease the load off physicians are equally crucial. There are ample instances, wherein, despite best efforts of physicians, healthcare services have been found well short of bench-marked quality, largely on account of disoriented auxiliary medical staff. Consequently, along with a direct impact on patient’s well-being, it will also show up in physicians’ inability to practice sustainable growth.

Streamlining clinical administration through an optimum mix of technology and human resources

In an industry characterized by radical computerization of healthcare administration, the recent Federal Health Reforms, calling for more emphasis on further automating medical operations, should come as a relief to practitioners seeking to balance their auxiliary and administrative functions with an optimum mix of technology and human resources. But, finding an optimum mix of technology and human resources is no easy task: cost of installing technology interface, and training required to orient human resources to the installed technology comes in the way of providing medical services at competitive prices.

The recent study by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has unfolded some interesting facts about prevailing status of technologically oriented medical services:

• Most hospitals are still capturing patient data manually, fouling up clinical transformation goals
• While many healthcare organizations have teams in place to modernize clinical practice across the enterprise, plenty still struggle to capture the right data and provide optimal staffing to produce ongoing quality improvement
• An astonishing 79% of respondents said they still gather outcomes data by hand – manual processes for capturing, collating, and analyzing data responsible for the lack of electronic means to conduct these functions.
• Close to two-thirds total respondents said the staff at their organizations simply did not have enough time to participate in all necessary quality-improvement activities, which becomes a particular concern when hospital executives cannot have direct access to quality reports or specialized IT staff has to intervene to develop reports because the staff running the reports do not have the authority to directly create them.
• Sometimes, organizations lacked the right types of employees, meaning inability to find a right mix of support and administration staff.

Outsourcing staffing requirements to Medicalbillersandcoders

While the result of the survey is an eye-opener on the current problems plaguing Physicians’ practice in the US, it is also a guideline for finding a useful mix of administration staff, and technology for advanced quality in medical care. Still, the word ‘Optimum’, being subjective, should be left to the discretion of concerned practitioners, who can best judge depending on their operational and revenue margins. Alternatively, there are proven agencies, which have the requisite expertise on advising optimum staffing for technology-driven medical operations. What is more, they even source and supply compatible human resources to complement their comprehensive advisory solutions.

Medicalbillersandcoders.com, being the premier advisory for administrative medical services, has the credentials and competence to deliver custom-made solutions for medical practices seeking a judicious mix of technology and human resources in their administrative functions.

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Published By - Medical Billers and Coders
Published Date - Sep-21-2011 Back