Many rural clinics run just about every day on a skeleton crew. It seems there is never enough people on shift! This is why it is crucial to keep everyone doing exactly what they need to, and nothing extra in your rural healthcare clinic.

Your office has these departments and there’s no room for workers to vary from their everyday tasks to work on something else.

Front Desk

This is such an important part of your clinic! The staff members up at front desk do everything from greet patients, to answer the phones, to schedule appointments, to check out people before they leave. That is a lot! All of these functions are very important, so adding any more to that list would mean the quality of your service would suffer. Your patients deserve a smiling face when they walk in, not a stressed out one.

Billing

There is a lot that goes into billing, like knowing whether to bill the patients directly or their insurance. You also need to know abbreviations and codes, have a working knowledge of how the insurance industry works, and more. Even though billing is important and needs to be done correctly, it can be hard to give it the time and dedication it deserves. You are forced to either pay a person to do just that and lose a big part of your budget, or have someone hurry and finish it when their other tasks are finished. Neither is a great option. The best way to make this efficient is not to do it at all, but rather have an outside vendor handle it.

Nurses and Physicians

To be most efficient, have your doctors and nurses work in teams. This means your nurses will get to know the patients that visit each doctor and give them dedicated care. Because the focus of the team should be on the needs of the patient, patient care goals determine the makeup of your team and the responsibilities each team member has to address these patient problems. You may want to match a bilingual nurse with a doctor who cannot speak Spanish (or another language that is most prevalent in your area), so there are no gaps in communication with his or her patients. This is just one example.

Medical Assistants

Many patient care functions, such as data collection and patient education, can be successfully delegated to trained assistants, freeing the doctors and nurses to move on to other patients faster. You may be reluctant to delegate tasks. Keep in mind that delegating is not the same as just walking away from your patient. The medical assistant should be very well trained in what they need to do, say, and provide to the patient to finish out their visit. Making sure this happens will ensure they do their jobs to your satisfaction, meaning their training is an investment that will pay off.

Bringing in a third-party company for certain tasks is a great way to streamline your rural healthcare clinic and keep everything running efficiently. When you allow Aptus Associates, LLC to deal when some of your office functions, you free up your staff members to handle the medical tasks of your clinic. Find out today how we can handle your insurance entry and other billing aspects of your clinic. Request our services by emailing [email protected].