Can doctors optimize their busy lives?

February 24, 2020

Studies follow one another and look alike: doctors are under stress, their schedules are overloaded and the weight of tasks with no added value is increasing. How to organize to work better and be less under pressure? How to find the path of care above all and detach from the subjects that you find soporific and time-consuming?

The doctor, an entrepreneur like any other?

As an entrepreneur, I have long been sensitive to the question of optimizing my daily life: rationalizing my working time, knowing how to arbitrate and focusing on the subjects for which I have real added value, knowing how to delegate. , organize my work environment, dedicate a time to internal or external exchanges but also keep some for management … All these little things that accumulated can quickly occupy half a day per week.By interacting with doctors for almost four years, I see that the questions they are asking about the rationalization of their time are very close to my concerns. The doctor is also an entrepreneur. With an additional difficulty, since he does not have a (brilliant) team of twelve people to share with him the weight of daily tasks.

The doctor's daily life: too many non-medical tasks

Secretarial, administrative, maintenance, organization of the medical office: the doctors no longer know where to turn and some believe that their medical time represents only 70% of their weekly workload. Yet other doctors manage to reach up to 90% of treatment timeThey have managed, over the years, to organize their activity and to obtain help, either with employees or via tools, for subjects that are not directly related to the anamnesis or diagnosis. Thus they obtain a better profitability from their activity and especially a life organization perceived as more qualitative.

Unevenly busy periods of activity

Some days and certain time slots are busier than others. Monday and Friday are traditionally more active than other days of the week. For general practitioners, the hourly distribution of the workload is also uneven, with the end of the day very often saturated. This is all the more true when the doctor consults without an appointment and the influx of patients fills the waiting room faster than it empties.

Knowing how to identify the busiest periods is essential for the doctor because it is the preliminary step to optimizing his schedule. Some choose to consult without an appointment in the morning and exclusively by appointment in the afternoon. Others consult only by appointment, while keeping buffer periods that will absorb the famous patients taken in emergency, "in between".

A workspace to optimize

Optimization of the workspace is a point that is too often neglected, while it is essential to save time and allow patients to feel more serene.

The waiting room: to be fitted out comfortably

Bright, comfortable, the perfect waiting room exists! It should, as far as possible, be separated from the reception area and the secretariat to preserve confidentiality. If it is a suitable place to offer prevention messages, you must be careful not to create an anxiety-provoking and overly medical environment.

For practical reasons, if you must not hear any of the verbal exchanges that take place in your care space, the waiting room must be close to your office to limit the time spent going back and forth to pick up your patients.

Finally, the waiting room of tomorrow could also be a place for "pre-treatment" because it is possible to take advantage of the time that patients spend there to offer them the opportunity to start filling out an online history questionnaire by example. The latter will save you time immediately afterwards during the consultation.

Doctor's office: how to organize it effectively

To consult your patients in good conditions, it is necessary to think carefully of the office and examination room spaces. They must guarantee the comfort of your patients, while allowing you to optimize your time. Here are the essential elements to take into account:

  • a large office: it must provide sufficient space to accommodate a computer, printer, folder for letters, space for papers and files in progress;

  • an ergonomic, comfortable chair adjustable in height for you;

  • two armchairs in front of your patient desk;

  • a library, furniture dedicated to the storage and sorting of your (many) documents and papers;

  • an adjustable height examination table;

  • storage for medical devices: these must be within easy reach of the examination area and must have doors, some of which lock for the most sensitive products.

The doctor's schedule: think about how to optimize it

This is the most important point, and which presents the most significant room for maneuver in terms of optimization. Indeed, the organization of consultations during the day or their distribution over the week is decisive for optimally distributing the workload and thus obtaining quality care time for its patients.As mentioned above, it is important to identify the main points of tension to find ways to be more effective. The work week of a doctor is not infinitely extendable, it will be necessary to be as ingenious as during a game of Tetris to correctly and efficiently complete this schedule.

Hellocare can help you optimize your time: schedule an appointment with us to talk about it with our team!