When developing a staffing plan for your practice, make sure you have the optimum number of team members for each physician in the practice. You do not want too few, or too many staff members. To find out what the optimum number is for your practice, you need to do some measuring and evaluating. Measurement is key.

1. Evaluate your current situation. Look at what you have now to see if there are opportunities for improvement compared to similar types of practices as well as high-performing practices. Look at several different factors: How many staff you have for each physician; how many staff you have in each type of job; how many staff you have compared to the number of patients you see; the cost of your staff for each physician; and the cost of the staff compared to your total revenue. How do all of these numbers stack up against similar practices? Measuring these areas will help you to establish some benchmarks.
2. Assess productivity. In order to do this, you need something to measure productivity against. Develop performance-level expectations for each job; then compare that with the actual performance of your staff. What do you expect each person to be doing in his or her job, and are they able to do it?
3. Analyze the policies and procedures you use. Take a look at how you check in and checkout patients, how you manage your medical records, and schedule appointments, so you can determine what is working well and what you need to change.
4. Analyze your business processes. Make flowcharts for each process. This will help you get a clearer picture of how your practice is run. It will make it easier to see if there are any steps that are unnecessary or repetitive.
5. Make necessary changes. Share the results of your analyses with all staff and physicians so they can give their input and suggestions, and also understand the need for change. If you make changes to the number of team members in the practice, again, measuring is key – before and after the changes survey patient satisfaction, physician productivity, and staff costs.

Team1Medical Staffing has been a reliable source of allied health professionals for many of the best medical practices in Houston for more than 20 years. Call 713-590-2980 or apply online today, and find out why we have earned our reputation as one of the best medical staffing firms in the Gulf Coast area.