Figuring out how to properly schedule patients for visits in order to minimize wait times is much more complicated than it sounds, Sanjeev Agrawal, founder and CEO of Collegefeed, wrote in a post for Forbes.
“The average wait time for a routine visit to a physician is 24 minutes,” Mr. Agrawal wrote. “I am sure I am not the only one who has sat in a doctor’s waiting room thinking, ‘You said you would see me at 3:00 p.m. — why am I being called at 3:24? This happens every time; I bet you could have predicted it. So, why didn’t you just ask me to come at 3:24 instead?'”
Hospitals are using the wrong set of tools to solve the problem, Mr. Agrawal wrote. Organizations are struggling to use calculators, EHR templates, and pen and paper. when they should utilize data analytics. In the course of his research, Mr. Agrawal looked into a mid-sized infusion treatment center struggling with patient scheduling.
The 33-chair clinic sees about 70 patients per day, each for different lengths of time. It has a total of 177 potential starting time slots for appointments, Mr. Agrawal calculates.
“Now, add to this the reality of a hospital — some days nurse schedules are different from others, the pattern of demand for infusion services varies widely by day of week, doctor’s schedules are uneven across the week, special occurrences like clinical trials or changes in staff need to be considered, and very quickly, you are looking at a problem that’s very hard to solve with simple heuristics and rules of thumb,” Mr. Agrawal wrote.
If hospitals begin to outfit themselves with the tools and resources necessary to produce and track the type of data outlined in his post, there will be a large economic opportunity for growth stemming from improved efficiency, outcomes and satisfaction.
“Most healthcare providers are waking up to the fact that their operations need a data-driven, scientific overhaul much the same way as auto manufacturing, semiconductor manufacturing and all other asset-intensive, ‘flow’-based systems have experienced,” Mr. Agrawal wrote. “The good news is that there are tools, software and resources that can be used to bring about this transformation.”
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