One of the most cost effective and efficient strategies in today’s primary care setting is to establish a patient care team conducive to all members working to the top of their license or scope of practice. In a world of provider and nurse shortages, coupled with delivering more complex care at a lower cost, it is crucial that offices develop strategies to make patient flow as efficient as possible.
The challenge is to align staff skills with the level of their credentialing, allowing them to increase responsibilities, and empowering them to engage in more complex, meaningful, hands-on work for which they are trained. This approach facilitates healthcare professionals to extend a higher level of critical thinking skills and offload less complex work. This will make all staff, including providers, more efficient, and provide an ability to handle a higher patient load due to increased efficiency.
Having a pre-visit chart review completed by clinical nursing staff prior to each chronic care visit is one example that has been proven beneficial to both patient and provider satisfaction, quality of care, and valuable service delivery. The provider can spend more time focusing on the patient as opposed to staring at the EHR searching for information that could have been accessed and at their fingertips prior to the visit.
