How to be more effective in patient management?

February 24, 2020

There are many studies which reveal a significant, not to say unbearable, pressure which weighs on the daily life of doctors, in particular general practitioners. Drees recently published that seven out of ten general practitioners consider the supply "insufficient" in their area of ​​practice, and that nearly 80% of them find it difficult to respond to requests from patients looking for a catch. fast charge. How can a doctor be more effective in patient management and thus optimize the time he spends? Here are some tips.

Number and duration of consultations: sensitive figures

In 2017, Doctolib published a study extracted from the appointments made on its platform concerning general practitioners. It confirmed previous figures communicated by several organizations.

"22 consultations per day of 17 minutes on average"

To these average lengths of consultations, two important components must be added to the doctor's agenda: the weight of administrative management and the time spent on telephone calls, which are not billed. In the end, by combining all their tasks, 30% of doctors work between 46 and 55 hours per week, which makes it a profession far above French standards in terms of working time.

Time-consuming management tasks

If a little more than half of general practitioners (54%) call on an accountant, 22% of doctors keep their own accounting. They are also very numerous to ensure the secretariat (or to rely on their spouse for this). Finally, if theinterview of the floors of the premises is carried out in 67% of the cases by an employee of the cabinet, there are still 14% of the general practitioners who also deal with this point.

Reducing the time allocated to these management tasks is a real challenge: certain tasks have no added value and the time spent taking care of them reduces the time available for the doctor to take care of more patients, for example.

How to save time on management tasks

Solutions exist to optimize the busy daily lives of doctors. Among these solutions, some are historic, such as the use of a medical secretariat, and others are more recent such as, for example, the use of Medical Assistants, a newly created statute to assist caregivers in care. Here is a quick overview of simple solutions to optimize your medical time and improve the care of your patients.

Delegation to a medical secretary

Doctors spend an average of 6 hours per week managing administrative tasks (source Drees). Using a medical secretary (employee on site or remote secretary) can free up a lot of time for the doctor. This secretariat can at least manage all telephone flows, direct patients to the right consultation channel (for example offer a medical teleconsultation for a follow-up or a prescription renewal). Le.a. the secretary will also be able to manage the consumables orders for the firm, take care of the maintenance, and check part of the accounting (monitoring of receipts in particular).

How much does it cost ?

  • A salaried secretary: around 2000 € / month full time

  • A remote secretary: around € 1 per call taken, for an average of € 700 per month. This brings the cost per appointment taken to around € 1.60.

Online booking tools

Making appointments online by patients is a good solution to reduce the time allocated to this task, it also allows – with SMS reminder systems – to limit the number of consultations to which patients do not appear ( forget to come or cancel the appointment). If some patients, mostly seniors, continue to prefer the telephone channel, the use of online medical diaries is already adopted by more than 1 in 4 French people and is experiencing exponential success with caregivers and patients alike.

How much does it cost ?

Many solutions exist. Here are their rates as of February 1, 2020:

  • Doctolib invoices 208 € / month (129 € + 79 €) for a medical office with teleconsultation option.

  • Cegedim, with Docavenue, invoices around € 110 / month for an appointment + ehealth teleconsultation solution.

  • Hellocare offers you an unlimited teleconsultation offer + appointment at 45 € / month.

Telemedicine solutions are eligible for equipment aid for self-employed physicians. The structure package amounts to € 350 / year.

Medical assistants

Newly created, the status of medical assistant allows doctors to recruit assistants who will come to support the doctor in the care of patients. They can for example take vital measures before a consultation.

This solution designed to free up medical time to allow doctors to focus on care is accompanied by lasting financial assistance, if the doctor agrees to receive more patients in return. It is one of the measures intended to reduce the impact of medical desertification.

How much does it cost ?

It takes around € 2,000 / month for a full-time assistant.

The level of CNAM funding makes it possible to finance all or part of this recruitment and varies according to the time of activity of the medical assistant (third-time, half-time or full-time). The amount of aid will thus be between 12,000 euros and 36,000 euros in the first year. For the following years, for a full-time medical assistant, this is € 27,000 annually in year 2 and € 21,000 from the third year.

Teleservices offered by Ameli Pro

The Health Insurance platform has been enriched with functionality over time and some are very effective in saving time on a daily basis. For example, declaring sick leave takes much less time than preparing a paper version to give to the patient.

These services are divided into two main types: those which will help to monitoring activity and those which make it possible to carry out secure teleprocedures thanks to authentication by Professional Health Card.

Examples of services offered via Ameli Pro :

  • monitoring of payments made by Health Insurance;

  • ordering screening kits, Cerfa forms;

  • declaration / monitoring of ROSP and structure package

  • prescribe a work stoppage or make a declaration of pregnancy and send it directly to the fund and the medical service;

  • consult, create, manage or follow the renewal of care protocols and make a request for implementationlong-term condition

  • etc.

The help of a professional to optimize his planning

Call the Hellocare team to see which solutions would be effective in helping you to optimize your timetable as best as possible, based on your personal criteria.