The way to a urologist’s heart

Only 2 more blitz weeks to go. Until they are completed, I’m not sure we’re able to assess whether we’ve made an impact on our 3^rd NAA numbers. But, we have already learned something important from this initiative.

We were all dreading our full week of seeing new consultations – whether in the office or at the cystoscopy unit. Our clinics are busy enough when there is a mix of follow-up visits (usually easy to complete in the scheduled 15 minutes) and new referrals (more intense and time-consuming). Having a clinic of all new referrals seemed daunting.

As expected, it was hard work, but several of the urologists commented on their very positive experience with blitz week.

While each doc was working the extra week, staff treated them as if they were actually on holiday. That is, that doc didn’t take calls from the hospital or referring physicians. He/she could focus entirely on completing consultations. This made the day’s work much more enjoyable. Freedom from interruptions meant I could move from one patient visit to the next without having to return phone calls in-between. I was able to stay on schedule, and left the office promptly once I’d seen my last patient. One of my partners commented that he enjoyed “spending more time with patients.” He felt less rushed with this arrangement.

Each doc had clinic scheduled from 0900 to 1200 and 1300 to 1600. (We took a lunch hour!) This was unanimously well-received. Our morning schedule usually consists of 0700 hospital rounds followed by surgery or office. If we have a morning office, there’s often a mad dash to make it there by 0800. Starting late means you will likely run late all morning. That’s very frustrating. Perhaps we need to change our 0800 habit to 0830. Of course, that will cut into our capacity, so we’ll see how our wait times are over the next few months. Having an extra 15-20 minutes before starting patient visits would also be a great time to make some phone calls, and get them out of the way before starting a morning office.

Now that we’ve had a taste of how pleasant it is to conduct a clinic in an unhurried fashion (and don’t think that our patients can’t tell when we’re feeling rushed!), it’ll be tough to go back to business as usual. I would like to pursue some changes that will improve our docs’ job satisfaction. Switching to a 0830 start is pretty simple; we just have to say the word to our staff. But, will the loss of 2 appointment slots per morning office have a big impact on our capacity? Just over 10% lost capacity – not a trifle. But perhaps we could compensate for that lost capacity by increasing the ratio of new consults to recalls. We’ve had success with that over the last year, but there’s room for further change. Also, there’s still considerable variation in recall rates among the urologists. Maybe we could link the number of new patients you see to the time your office starts in the morning. If a particular urologist sees a higher ratio of new patients, then he/she could be rewarded by a later start to his/her office. This would give an additional incentive (beyond altruism and peer pressure) for each doc to carefully consider their own recall practices and encourage them to adopt (or even just ask about) other’s methods.

We could also build in empty slots into the clinic schedule, to be used for phone calls, catching up on dictation, or spending extra time with a patient.

It was really valuable to learn this from blitz week. Coming up with ways to make our docs less harried is good for both physician and patient. We may provide the same technical care while dealing with repeated interruptions and late starts, but a happy, unhurried physician gives patients a better experience.