All Urgent Care

How to Handle Urgent Care Staff Burnout

Covid-19 brought in significant challenges to the Urgent Care facilities which included staff shortage as well. Even when the patient influx was high, manpower seemed to reduce in number due to several reasons in the Urgent Care Centers. Now, this fluctuation can be expected again as people tend to overcrowd while slowly sailing into the normal world.

As these fluctuations happen, it is important to fill Urgent Care Centers with efficient personnel. It is a challenge to get people back, it is even more challenging to hire new people.

This is a great opportunity for Urgent Care facilities to cultivate good practices that helps with enhanced patient experience and management of high patient influxes.

Here are a few tips that Urgent Care Centers can instil to ensure substantial growth of their business:

Table of Contents

Normalize high volume patient influx

For Urgent Care facilities with load-sharing and strategic staff structuring, there is evidently an increased efficiency as the work is divided evenly to complete the entire process with just enough manpower. Even in case of high patient volume, such centers tend to maintain their pace and work together and bring out successful outcomes. So, it is necessary for Urgent Care facilities to incorporate effective manpower and solutions to cope with urgent and peak situations.

Incorporate Automation

The Digital era is here to make lives easier. Why not utilize it for the best? Urgent Care facilities can also consider this option to enhance their efficiency when manpower lags. Solutions like EMR and PMS will allow Urgent Care facilities to streamline their revenue processing and become more aligned with an effective patient care center.

Let us look at three ways technology brings about improved patient experience:

Online Registration– Allow patients to register their details and necessary information onto a secured online platform according to their convenience, before even stepping into the Urgent Care facility. This will also help enhance the accuracy of patient information to further take it to insurance processing.

Online Appointment Fixing/Scheduling — Providing the responsibility to fix their own appointments to the patients will not only manage their wait period expectations but also help them choose the right time and cancel whenever they need to. This significantly helps to reduce no-shows.

Smart queuing — After the online scheduling, allow patients to view their waiting list or virtual line and get down for the encounter as their time comes. This will help them be prepared for their doctor appointments and reduces stress during the wait times.

Carefully structure the Urgent Care team

Urgent Care facilities must know how to rationally structure their clinic and administrative team to attain efficiency. Trying non-technological solutions for replaceable operations and making minor changes to the staff structuring will result in significant profits.

Let’s consider remote staff for instance,

Remote front desk operators will go a long way for Urgent Care Centers. Confirmation on upcoming appointments, pre-registration, patient check-ins, co-pay collections, and such can be done from a remote place, thereby freeing up time for most activities for clinic workers. This will help them attain an accurate workload balance.

Train the staff to be partners in solution

Properly leading the staff at Urgent Care will facilitate problem-solving instances as teamwork rather than an individual task. This will allow the staff to think about ideas, solutions, and plans and bring them to the table for discussion. This way, along with employee engagement, there will be huge ownership of challenges that come along the way for Urgent Care facilities.

Embrace the slow times

When things at Urgent Care facilities start to go in a slower pace, make arrangements to be prepared for the worst times. If the number of patients is on a decline at a point, then take the time to reflect on the experiences that were gained during the high patient influx. Share the data and the futuristic data with the staff, and they might come up with ideas to bring in the changes that could help manage the stress when things get stressful again.

But it is also important to take some time off during the slow times. Being prepared to face storm doesn’t mean that one must work meticulously throughout the good and bad times. It is completely normal to keep the minds off, it is indeed recommended to take things easily or maybe take a small break from work.

Train the staff to better serve the community

The business environment always has the tendency of fluctuating every then and there. Urgent Care Centers are also prone to such fluctuations. Trying out solutions and training the staff to adapt to these changes will help them to radically improve the business efficiency.

Urgent Care facilities must ensure that their staff and their technology are flexible to the ever-changing market trends. When they can pivot to the changes as they happen, it will bring down quite a lot of pressure that’s on the facility.

Incorporating solutions or technologies will allow Urgent Care facilities to identify key weak points and the need for improvements, and evaluate them along with what is going on in the market. This way, they can always stay on top of their business process and ensure success at all points.

Train the staff according to the insights received and understanding of what is prevalent in the community and what the specialties in the services delivered are. Having a clear understanding of this will help them to be prepared to serve a particular community, thereby, instituting efficiency as an individual and as a part of the Urgent Care facility.

This can also be considered as an ultimate opportunity to engage well with the staff. Make them efficient through a series of training and making them involved in a lot of processes and decision making including government and community organizations. Further, get down to the community and identify populations who are seeking medical attention and establish a strong connection with them. This will enhance the staff engagement and at the same time will make the community happy and satisfied.

Reach out to our experts at Practolytics if you need more information on Urgent Care revenue cycle and Urgent Care administrative aspects.