Healthcare Must be Productive and Efficient to be Profitable

Productivity and efficiency go hand in hand, if you have one but not the other, your business could be suffering. More importantly, the people you service may be suffering even more.  Let's just look at the definitions: 

Productive - Of or involved in the creation of goods and services to produce wealth or value. It is based on output per unit of time. 

Efficient - Acting or producing EFFECTIVELY with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort. The best possible output within each unit of time. 

We can be productive but not efficient. For instance, if two people transcribe recordings for a doctor, and one finishes quicker than the other every day, that looks productive. However, if there are numerous errors throughout the transcription, it causes more work and more time to complete the corrections. This is not effective. In addition, these mistakes could be detrimental to a patient's care, leading to costly lawsuits. The transcriptionist providing the quality work may be slower, but accuracy is critical and ultimately leads to better quality and profitability. 

The Institute of Medicine further defines quality as having the following properties or domains: 

Effectiveness- Relates to providing care processes and achieving outcomes as supported by scientific evidence. 

Efficiency- Relates to maximizing the quality of a comparable unit of health care delivered or unit of health benefit achieved for a given unit of health care resources used. 

Equity-Relates to providing health care of equal quality to those who may differ in personal characteristics other than their clinical condition or preferences for care. 

Patient Centeredness - Relates to meeting patients' needs and preferences and providing education and support. 

Safety - Relates to actual or potential bodily harm. 

Timeliness - Relates to obtaining needed care while minimizing delays. 

Productivity Means Quantity - Efficiency is the quality. Productivity means you might see 50 patients a day - it's your mass output. Efficiency measures how many of that 50 you were truly able to help. Here are some questions to ask yourself: 

1. Were you able to listen to each patient's history, make the right diagnosis and provide proper care? 

2. Have you had proper training on your EMR and adding patient notes? 

3. Have you educated yourself on the current medications available for diseases and breakthroughs in medicine? 

4. Ask yourself, does it really matter if you see 50 patients a day if the majority of your patients are still suffering and their ailment has not been properly diagnosed? 

Productivity + Efficiency = True Productivity