Practice Transformation & Office Efficiency
Many medical offices are still structured like offices of 20 years ago, and physicians and staff feel the stress of working in an outdated model. Delivering state-of-the-art, evidence-based health care in a Patient Centered Medical Home requires a restructuring of office practices, including improved billing and coding, workflow, patient flow and care delivery. Resources in this section of the Web site are designed to assist family physicians in exploring the new model and taking concrete action steps to transform their practices. Research shows not only that the quality of care improves, but also patient, physician and staff satisfaction increases. Transformation takes time, but the results are worthwhile. Welcome to a very promising future.
The goal of CAFP’s capacity-building collaborative (C4) is to enhance the ability of small and solo practices to implement systematic improvements to their office practices.
CAFP is assisting practices in understanding various practice vitality measures and identifying the best methods to incorporate them into their practices.
Waits, delays and cancellations can be common, but all contribute to non-value-added time for patients, providers and staff.
Office process mapping can help in visualizing the sequence of steps involved in each work function, evaluating them, and looking for ways to get rid of non-value-added steps.
Improving the referral process involves building model referral relationships and strengthening communication to improve the referring physicians’ ability to receive relevant reports.
In order to improve patient access, practices must reduce their backlogs.
