Excellent patient care is the heart of every medical organization. I have seen organizations excel when providers feel empowered and patients receive high-quality medical services within timely appointments. Balancing those factors may require some operational adjustments, but they could be worth it for teams of all sizes. Once more industry leaders learn tips for improving workflow efficiency, they can lead our rapidly changing health care landscape with improved patient outcomes and peak productivity.
What Is Workflow Efficiency In Health Care?
Workflow efficiency in health care describes how well a team manages tasks, streamlines responsibilities and reduces operational downtime without disrupting patient care. The U.S. struggles with this at local and national levels. A 2024 study found the nation ranked last in health system performance compared to nine other leading countries due to issues like physician burnout.
Improving efficiencies of workplace operations can address the numerous factors that make U.S. health care providers fall behind international competitors. If clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and other fast-paced medical environments conduct business with seamless productivity, issues like physician stress and patient discontent may become less of a systemic challenge.
Tools to Optimize Operations
When health care leaders are ready to optimize how their workplace operates, it is time to reflect on useful tools. Learning about the resources available for speeding up workflows will make the path forward more evident, regardless of what patient care services you provides.
Technology
Updating office technology is one of the most essential tips for improving workflow efficiency. Outdated software may not support modern operations with protocols that did not exist when providers wrote them. You should consider adding better technology to your workplace, such as inventory management systems and performance analytics software. They will handle some daily responsibilities while maintaining data that shows where your team can continue improving.
Some technology is also hardware-based. Automated machinery is one example of products that optimize efficiency by removing repetitive tasks consuming everyone’s time. They could reduce each team member’s stress and lower the odds of human error during tasks like dispensing medications. Upgrading this kind of tool depends on which devices your facility currently uses and if they are considered outdated compared to what is available today.
Delegation
You do not need to invest in better technology to delegate tasks. Team members can also discuss sharing responsibilities more effectively, too. Scheduling routine conversations once a quarter will start dialogues about what is working and where everyone still needs help. Given how higher stress levels correlate with lower productivity rates, splitting tasks according to each person’s strengths could positively affect your organization’s efficiency.
Evolving Workflows
When the steps within a workflow meet everyone’s basic expectations — like filing patient information or scheduling prescription refills — it is challenging to remember that the workflow can still improve. Crossing a bare minimum threshold is not as helpful as a system that makes a business excel.
Those in leadership positions should reflect on the specific steps within each operational responsibility to analyze if parts could improve. Updating things like the technology used to accomplish a task or refining communication about responsibilities between staff is another way to boost efficiency and patient care.
Patient Feedback
Even if you are one of the health care workers interacting with patients or customers every day, their opinions on personal experiences may seem murky. People may not always feel comfortable complaining about poor customer service. They may not do well with confrontation or feel rushed out the door by their medical provider.
Someone seemingly satisfied with their doctor’s appointment might wish their physician had slowed down and shown more personal investment in their pain. They may not say that while checking out, which is why finding improved ways to get individual feedback is one of the most crucial things to learn about how to improve patient care. If you know what is missing, you can refine your workplace’s procedures.
Benefits of Improving Workflow Efficiency
Utilizing tools to streamline workplace efforts may take time, but there are numerous benefits for those who commit to the process. Understanding what might be in store for your team or enterprise may motivate everyone to start workflow improvements.
Organizations Could Save Money
Efficiency makes everyone’s job easier. If you are less stressed, you are likely more engrossed in what you do every day. Research shows employees who do not feel engaged cost the world $8.9 trillion in 2023, which is a significant loss of revenue in any industry. Health care brands could prevent that same financial loss by honing operational efficiency in every department.
Patients May Experience Better Outcomes
Medical firms that do not encounter issues like miscommunication or lapses in team responsibilities can serve their patients better. People may not wait as long for appointments or feel rushed through their interactions if the experts involved are not struggling to keep up with their responsibilities.
Making the workplace operate more smoothly is one of the tips for improving patient care that can feel manageable because there are actionable tools available to make that happen. Instead of hoping patients have positive experiences, updated technological tools or professional procedures guarantee different outcomes that might be better for everyone involved.
Compliance Policies Could Become Straightforward
Optimizing documentation processes helps organizations stay aligned with compliance policies without as much confusion. New software can take care of smaller paperwork details through preprogrammed compliance procedures. Your team will not need to worry about potentially facing fines if they have advanced support and automatically updated policies with efficiency upgrades like improved software programs.
Steps to Refine Workplace Procedures
Once you have read about tips for improving patient care and making the workplace better for everyone involved, you may want to start renewed efforts to accomplish those goals. Meet with your workers to discuss potential steps forward based on what would best overcome your most pressing challenges.
1. Review and Analyze Current Systems
You will not know which processes are redundant without a thorough review of your organization. Identify daily tasks and sort them by factors like their frequency and duration, success rates, general frustrations felt by those doing the work, and how much time each system takes.
Reviewing the results and analyzing them for the biggest roadblocks to improved productivity may help your company move forward. You will prepare yourself with the necessary data to identify the most pressing issues holding your team back from high-quality patient care and optimum efficiency.
2. Meet With Everyone Involved
It is crucial to bring your review data to meetings with every person involved in your workplace. Talk to them about what you have found or review the systems together. They may have differing viewpoints regarding the issues making their tasks less productive, giving you more challenges to target you might not have known about otherwise.
As you learn how to improve patient care, remember that getting feedback from everyone is vital. Hard data can only tell you so much — you will likely need to combine your findings with your enterprise’s everyday experiences to understand the full picture.
3. Start Small and Gradual
If you find a significant gap between workplace systems and patient care, it is tempting to address it head-on. When that moment arrives, consider the size of your challenge. Experts found lasting organizational change happens after minor adjustments occur over time.
Break down each potential problem into manageable steps. Give your workforce time to get used to every small change so the new procedures become individual habits. You can overcome even the most pressing efficiency problems if your team does not feel overwhelmed by the effort.
Patient care may also improve more effectively with gradual changes. Small, dedicated steps show how much your company cares about long-term improvements. People will continue coming to you for medical services because your efforts will feel familiar but start working better for everyone.
4. Document Positive and Negative Changes
Standardizing processes is an ongoing effort. You could make one effective change that does not need improvements, while others might require incremental refinements over months or years. When that happens, documentation becomes a guiding light.
Workplace leadership should document any efforts made to improve patient experiences or daily operations. Note when those changes went into effect and record any positive or negative outcomes during the weeks afterward. You will know if your team’s efforts are successful when you can trace either your progress or your challenges.
5. Review Ongoing Performance Outcomes
Picture your workforce making optimization updates and recording the outcomes. The information will not prove as useful if you do not schedule ongoing performance reviews. Gather the same people who originally discussed which workflows could improve to cover the information you have logged over the past few weeks or months.
Discuss if the data reflects how they have felt in their everyday roles. A new software program or patient interaction guide might improve efficiency, but require some streamlining to make those changes fit more easily with everyone’s responsibilities. Reviewing your workplace’s efforts once per quarter ensures everyone has time to reflect and change what is not working. Your employees and patients will not feel stuck in a suboptimal system if everyone is always seeking growth opportunities through reflection.
Strategies for Getting Team Members On Board
When someone is overworked and stressed out, they may not want to engage in new workflow procedures. You could have workers who feel this way if inefficiency has slowed your professional environment down for a long time. Motivate everyone by engaging them with personalized approaches.
Involve People From the Beginning
Everyone may become less hesitant to try new approaches to daily operations if they are part of evolving workflows from the start. Create a group representing every branch of your organization to discuss your goals before procedure reviews begin. They can relay your plan to their teams so everyone’s part of the process. Effective communication from those in leadership positions can improve perceptions of support while reducing stress if maintained over time.
Communicate Clearly and Often
Letting everyone know about your goals at the beginning of your efficiency improvements is important, but it is not enough to make each worker feel engaged. Communication must become a recurring effort. As you meet with people and implement small changes, send routine updates to let everyone know how it is going. You will remind each person that they are part of the process, which might make it easier for people throughout your facility to get fully on board with ongoing changes.
Provide Accessible Training Resources
Procedural updates may seem intimidating when people feel like they must meet high-performance standards with tools they do not know how to use. Training resources play a significant role in getting everyone passionately involved in improving patient care and workflow productivity.
Provide the same lessons to everyone adapting to new medical products or software programs. When they finish their training, the lessons can remain available whenever they need to revisit instructional modules. Feeling comfortable with change is easier if you do not feel thrown into it, which consistently accessible guidance materials can prevent.
Emphasize Your Desire for Collaboration
Disaffected staff might appreciate their involvement at the start of workflow improvement efforts but not expect it to last long. Collaboration can become a central part of your ongoing strategies so everyone in your workforce knows your desire for their involvement is genuine. Contact the same people who helped in the beginning during ongoing review meetings throughout the coming years. They will stay engaged and excited to try new ideas if everyone feels equally valued, regardless of their workplace seniority.
Explore Resources and Tips for Improving Patient Care
There are many tips for improving workflow efficiency in the health care industry, so it is crucial to find what works best for your team. I always recommend meeting with people one on one, gathering data, making small changes and reflecting on the outcomes often. At Capsa Healthcare, we help providers prioritize their patients by avoiding inefficient processes. Our expertise in health care solutions, technology and design innovate workplaces by improving workflows alongside patient care.
Our ergonomic product designs and advanced approaches to everyday responsibilities help organizations mitigate risks and conserve resources while becoming leaders in their fields.
Gaurav Agarwal is CEO of Capsa Healthcare and brings over 25 years of leadership experience in driving innovation and commercial success across the medical devices, diagnostics, and healthcare IT sectors. Most recently, he served as President and CEO of Vyaire Medical, the global leader in respiratory medical devices. Before Vyaire, Agarwal was President and Chief Commercial Officer at Acelity, Inc., the largest wound care company in the world. He has also held senior leadership positions at Smith & Nephew and GE.
