5 Operations Management Tips To Improve Productivity And Customer Experience In Healthcare

Operations management in healthcare shouldn’t be a one-fits-all approach but tailored to the needs of each clinic. For instance, an ICU and an aged care facility will likely have very different day-to-day operations. 

But, no matter the differences, healthcare operations management always boils down to optimizing processes and workflows in order to boost productivity and improve patient experience. Healthcare operations management requires careful planning and structuring since it’s an industry that deals with a person’s health. 

Source: freepik

So, let’s dive in and take a look at some great operations management tips to improve productivity and customer experience in your clinic or medical practice.

What Is Operations Management in Healthcare?

In healthcare, operations management can be defined as organizing, running, and supervising a facility’s day-to-day work processes and activities. The goal of operations management is to increase customer experience and productivity. So, the operations manager’s job is to oversee and optimize the different processes in the healthcare facility, making the organization more efficient. 

Many different types of operations management fall under this category, depending on the facility’s structure: patient care management, financial management, administrative management, legal management, staff management, etc. 

Patient care management 

Patient care management is the medical side of operations management, and it entails taking care of healthcare analytics, risk management, standardizing protocols, medication adherence, and similar tasks. Ultimately, the goal of the patient care manager is to improve patient outcomes.

Staff management

Staff management entails employee scheduling, recruiting, onboarding, training and development programs, measuring and improving staff productivity, etc. The goal of workforce management is for the facility to always be covered, and to ensure there are medical professionals available.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleagues (AAMC), by 2033 the United States should expect a significant shortage of physicians – anywhere from 54,100 to 139,000. David J. Skorton, MD and President and CEO of AAMC:

“The gap between the country’s increasing health care demands and the supply of doctors to adequately respond has become more evident as we continue to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge of having enough doctors to serve our communities will get even worse as the nation’s population continues to grow and age.”

These shortage predictions further confirm the importance of having quality HR workflows and an excellent staff management process in healthcare.

Financial management

This type of operations management takes care of costs and expenses vs. revenue. Financial management operations are also necessary for the proper allocation of funds throughout departments. And, of course, that’s how we measure the productivity of a healthcare facility. 

Administrative management

In this type of operations management, we typically have things like data entry and storage, capturing the patients’ electronic health records, appointment setting, coordinating processes and workflows across departments, etc. 

Processes like optimizing the patient flow also often fall under this category. Making the organization more agile, structured, and organized is the primary goal of administrative management. 

Legal management

Legal management is the area of operations that ensures the healthcare facility is compliant and works according to the best practices, rules, and regulations. Legal management also takes care of labor laws and business laws. 

Typically, HIPAA compliance also falls under legal management. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a privacy rule that standardizes and regulates capturing, protecting, and storing the patients’ health information like their medical records. Patient confidentiality and data privacy are essential in healthcare, so ensure that your clinic complies with all necessary rules and regulations.  

What Are the Most Common Challenges of Operations Management in Healthcare?

Operations managers have to juggle a lot at once. Their job is vital for every department. Here are some of the common challenges of operations management in healthcare.

• Cutting costs and working more efficiently
• Improving patient care and safety
• Scheduling patient appointments
• Shortage of staff and medical professionals coverage
• Equipment and supply management
• Allocating budgets for different departments
• Implementing new technologies and tools
• Boosting staff productivity

All of the above problems need careful analysis, planning, strategizing, and action to get solved. Luckily, we have advice that can help. 

5 Operations Management Tips in Healthcare

Operations management as a line of work follows a similar structure in all industries. However, due to the sensitivity of their daily activities, healthcare facilities should tailor it specifically for their needs. Here are some valuable operations management tips to improve productivity and customer experience in healthcare:

1. Review all operations to find gaps and inefficiencies

Every operations manager should start by doing a gap analysis of all departments and operations within a healthcare institution, to figure out how to improve and optimize things. 

For instance, is your appointment reminder system efficient, or is staff spending too long on this task doing it manually? Are patients missing appointments? If you see that this is an issue, then a possible solution would be automating the appointment reminders and scheduling to free some time on your employee’s hands. 

To perform a legit and trustworthy gap analysis, you have to ensure it’s correct and unbiased. There are two principles to follow:

• Use data to draw conclusions
• Choose the right metrics and KPIs

Here are some targeted areas to focus on and review in your clinic:

• How optimized are your processes?
• How efficient is your technology?
• How productive is your staff?
• How satisfied are your customers/patients?
• How good are your patient outcomes?

Typically, operations management tries to balance staff productivity, patient quality, and cost-efficiency and distribution. So, decide on the right metrics and start collecting data. Then, analyze this data to see which processes in your healthcare facility are inefficient and should be optimized. 

The purpose of performing a comprehensive gap analysis is to turn your facility into a more agile and dynamic organization that can grow and adjust in a reforming industry like healthcare. 

2. Leverage technology to optimize workflows

Today, we enjoy advanced technologies that can give your health clinic a major boost and optimize or automate many processes. Healthcare is a reforming industry, and technology and big data step in to solve many inefficiencies. 

Technology for administrative processes

As a result of technological innovations, today, we can enjoy the benefits of hospital management systems. Or, we can upload sensitive documents in the cloud and collaborate with other team members in real-time. 

Tools like these can often help you save on expenses since they’re a much more cost-effective solution than paying additional overhead for manual labor. When we talk about operations management in healthcare, a considerable concern is cutting the costs while keeping or improving performance. This means that automation and software should be your best friends. 

Implementing electronic health records or EHR will help you with data capture and streamlining all patient records into one centralized location. Using EHRs will improve patient care since it will store the entire medical history in one spot, available for all medical professionals to assess before treatment. 

Technology for medical patient care

In medical treatment and patient care, clinics should also try to catch up to the latest advancements and treatment options as much as their budget allows. 

For instance, nowadays experts realize the potential of technologies like Augmented Reality in healthcare and how they can improve patient care and outcomes. With AR, you can help patients understand their bodies better, make a better diagnosis, explain a new drug in a way that’s easier to understand, and even get assistance in surgeries. 

Another example of improving patient experience with technology is telemedicine. Thanks to many tools that allow remote patient monitoring and consultation, we can now enjoy the many benefits of telehealth.

Source: freepik

Other examples of technology improving patient care are remote monitors, wearable devices, Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), etc. Using these tools in your medical practice will automate many processes and, most importantly, reduce the chances of unintentional medical errors. 

3. Adequate resource management 

When we talk about resource management in healthcare, we refer to things like medical professionals, equipment, supplies, instruments, medicine, implantable devices, etc. 

Having adequate resource management, especially considering the scarcity of the above supplies and human capital, means ensuring that there’s always enough coverage. Operations management professionals cannot let patient care be affected by improper resource planning. 

Staff and health professionals coverage

When there’s a pandemic outbreak affecting everyone globally, healthcare workers and medical professionals are needed more than ever. Unintentionally, Covid-19 exposed many inefficiencies in the operations management of healthcare institutions, and insufficient or inadequate staff coverage was one of them. 

Healthcare is a sensitive industry where staff coverage, particularly medical professionals, is of the utmost importance. Lives depend on it, so there shouldn’t be any margin for errors. 

Unfortunately, planning and scheduling employee shifts to ensure proper coverage at all times can be time-consuming, and can prevent you from focusing on what really matters – patient care. Plus, manually scheduling your employees’ shifts can result in the inevitable human error. 

To free up more time on your hands to dedicate to patients, you could try using healthcare scheduling software that will help you simplify and streamline employees’ schedules and ensure you always have coverage, even for last-minute cancellations.

Source: deputy

Equipment and supply coverage

Supply chain management (SCM) also falls under the responsibilities of the operations manager. Many parties are involved in a traditional SCM process – a manufacturer, supplier, distributor, the healthcare institution, and of course, the end customers or patients.

Improving supply logistics is of utmost importance in healthcare, since these supplies can be life-saving and time-sensitive. Plus, having efficient and more straightforward logistics from point A to point B often means cutting the cost and time for the supplies to arrive. As a result, you improve your clinic’s productivity and customer experience at the same time. 

As an operations manager in a clinic, ensuring adequate supply coverage can often mean strategically allocating expenses and setting priorities throughout different departments. If budgets are an issue, the manager will have to ensure that there isn’t one department swallowing unnecessary funds while another lacks necessities. 

4. Optimize the whole customer journey

Of course, effective operations management is necessary for boosting staff productivity and cutting costs, but don’t forget to maintain your focus on your patients and customers at all times. 

A good clinic will always take care of patients first and provide the best care possible to improve the outcomes. Therefore, many of your operational management efforts should aim towards improving patient care and customer experience. 

When we talk about customer experience, it’s important to note that this isn’t just reserved for in-person visits, but every single interaction a customer has with your clinic. For instance:

• How convenient is your appointment scheduling process?
• How long are your patient waiting times?
• Does your staff communicate well?
• What’s your billing and insurance process?
• What’s the quality standard of your patient care?
• How is your patient’s follow-up process?
• How do you record patient data?
• Do you grant your patients access to the latest treatments or equipment?
• How safe and comfortable do your patients feel coming to your clinic?

If you can’t answer questions like these, you can’t know which step of the customer journey needs fixing. Work together with your staff from different departments to find these answers. And, if you need more info on customer wants and needs, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Ask them what they would want different or what would make their visit or communication more pleasant. 

Additionally, pay attention to your patients’ digital experience. Here are some tips to help you improve your facility’s online appearance and customer journey:

• List your facility on search engine services like Google My Business;
• Implement an online appointment scheduling platform;
• Stay on-brand throughout all channels;
• Reply promptly to customer’s messages;
• Optimize your website for mobile, desktop, and tablet;
• Display your satisfied patient testimonials;

5. Increase employee engagement

Last but not least, the success and productivity of your practice greatly depend on how engaged your employees are. 

According to a Gallup research of 200 hospitals:

“…the key finding here is that nurse engagement is the No. 1 predictor of mortality variation across hospitals. The commitment and emotional involvement of the nurses on staff is even more important than their numbers.”

So, employee engagement is that much more critical in healthcare since it can literally affect patient outcomes and mortality rates. 

There are many different strategies operations managers can use to engage healthcare workers, such as:

Foster a learning culture

Invest in the continuous learning of your employees, and let them upgrade their knowledge. Career development is a huge factor in employee engagement and retention rates, and companies who realize that show a massive increase in productivity. 

Based on McKinsey insights, nurturing a learning culture and investing in your employees are crucial to drive a business forward. According to Matthew Smith, McKinsey’s chief learning officer:

“There’s a huge role that organizations play in setting the context and the culture for learning. Like so many things, it starts at the top, and it starts with having a CEO or a senior leader who actually values learning and talks about it very actively.”

Give recognition

When a team member performs incredibly well, don’t forget to show them appreciation and give recognition. Doing this can have a really positive impact on staff engagement and motivation to excel in their jobs. So, develop a great employee recognition program and start by setting a culture of gratitude. 

Offer flexible work hours

While remote work isn’t an option for medical staff, flexible working hours definitely could be. Since the pandemic started, more and more healthcare workers have started realizing the benefits of shift work. As a result, flexible schedules have become the norm in healthcare. Overworking and burnouts are common among medical professionals, and flexibility in their schedules can help prevent that. 

A 2021 Gartner survey on digital worker experience showed that flexible work hours increased productivity by an astonishing 43%. So, offering flexibility in your staff’s schedule will improve your employees’ mental health and engagement, as well as the success of your healthcare organization as a whole. 

Optimize your onboarding process

No employee can be engaged if they still cannot understand how the facility processes work and where they fit in the whole organizational structure. That’s why proper onboarding, training, and support or mentorship are such vital aspects of an employee engagement plan. 

Improve internal communication

If the internal communication in your healthcare facility is flawed or inefficient, all your other efforts can quickly turn to dust. Internal communication channels are essential for the proper information flow in every organization, especially where people’s lives are at stake. 

To Summarize

Meeting the organizational performance goals while maintaining a high level of patient care and customer experience is always a scale that operations managers have to balance out. Doing more with less is the main goal. 

Hopefully, our five operations management tips to improve productivity and customer experience in healthcare facilities will help you find what’s missing and structure your workflows in a more agile way. 

All things considered, a great operations management strategy based on data and adequate planning will inevitably result in a better customer experience and increased productivity for any healthcare facility. 

Rohit Rajpal

Rohit Rajpal is an accomplished writer and data enthusiast passionate about unraveling the intricacies of information and data. With a deep understanding of the subject matter, Rohit strives to simplify complex concepts and make them accessible to readers. Rohit’s expertise in the field and his knack for clear and concise communication make his blog an invaluable resource for those seeking clarity in the data-driven world.