In times like the ones we are living in, marked by the coronavirus epidemic and the impact of normal seasonal flu, a heated debate is underway on how to prevent the spread of infections.
Although people suspected of carrying the coronavirus are treated with more precautions, the risk of being infected by virus or bacteria carriers in the waiting rooms of medical offices remains a fear that is nevertheless well-founded.
Therefore the waiting rooms, which should represent the first step towards recovery, could actually become the antechamber of a very different outcome. Below, we will illustrate the strategies recommended by the best hospital management consulting companies that healthcare professionals can adopt to minimize waiting times at medical offices and hospitals, in order to avoid the spread of infections.
Ensuring good care, capable of reducing the waiting time of patients, is not always an easy task for hospital management.
Strategies that include methodologies and technologies help create a care scheme that values the doctor’s work and makes the time he dedicates to each patient more efficient, as well as facilitating the management of beds for admission and discharge.
All this is reflected in the satisfaction with the quality of the service and, consequently, in the image of the organization in the Health market.
According to the top hospital consultants in India, the main gateway for patients to the hospital is generally emergency care. Therefore, the first contact should identify the severity of the condition, in addition to determining if the individual will be medicated and released or if they will need to be hospitalized.
Obstacles at any of these stages impair the flow of care and are primarily responsible for the delay. Learn about five strategies that help hospital management reduce waiting time:
Risk classification: an efficient risk classification system, with trained and qualified professionals to determine the urgency of each case, is one of the most assertive ways to reduce waiting time.
That classification should, instead of based on the order of arrival, use the clinical condition to define the waiting time. Therefore, the greater the risk of death, the more quickly the patient must be cared for.
In this triage, those who do not present critical conditions can even be referred for an elective appointment, venting emergency care.
Intelligent management of beds: in the event that hospitalization is requested, this strategy is essential to guarantee control of waiting time. The processes that include admission, follow-up, and discharge from the hospital must be harmonized.
The obstacles encountered in communication between these three stages are, in general, the main culprits for delayed care and hospitalization of critically ill patients.
This occurs because, many times, the problems of bed management are due to the lack of communication about the discharge to the bed center and, consequently, the vacancy is not released.
Monitoring of indicators: monitoring care time, waiting time, classification of patients attended, admission, discharge and occupation rates is an attribute of hospital management.
The study of these indicators allows the manager to identify the errors of the process, understand the reason for that event and learn to act in the face of that situation, based on previous experiences.