How to Measure Productivity in Healthcare

Healthcare is a main pillar of the U.S. economy, accounting for 19.7% of the national gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. Nonetheless, healthcare does not always have a significant contribution to national economic growth with many factors playing a role in this discrepancy. Some of these factors include market irregularities, U.S. healthcare infrastructure peculiarities and regulatory requirements. Despite this, one factor a healthcare practice can control is its productivity measures.

Measuring productivity is vital to optimizing economic outputs in the healthcare industry with low productivity impacting a healthcare facility’s ability to function and support the economy in meaningful ways. Keep reading to learn more about how to improve productivity in your facility.

The Importance of Measuring Productivity

Measuring productivity allows you to find the areas of your facility that are operating smoothly and efficiently and those that could use improvement. Doing so helps you:

• Focus on long-term growth rather than short-term productivity gains that may undermine operations.
• Identify specific opportunities to control healthcare spending growth in ways that support the economy and patient outcomes.
• Deliver higher quality services while spending less on non-essential expenses.

In short, measuring productivity enables you to increase productivity to achieve positive outcomes. In healthcare settings, positive outcomes may involve continued medical advances, staying on top of service demands and improving affordability for patients.

However, measuring productivity is not as straightforward as it may seem, as the methods you use to measure productivity also matter.

Related Article: How to Improve Profitability and Efficiency in Hospitals

Traditional Measurement Methods

Traditional productivity measuring methods focus on hard metrics like time and financials. These hard metrics emphasize human capital and labor production rather than the services delivered. When seen through these measures, solid productivity in a healthcare setting is a matter of lower costs and quicker services.

Time metrics evaluate such factors as the following:

• The time needed to care for patients and complete each case
• The number of patients doctors treat per day
• The time healthcare employees spend with each patient

The financial healthcare productivity metrics look at:

• Employee labor costs: Financial metrics assess positions essential to patient care and those that provide supplemental benefits. Maximizing productivity in this area may involve redistributing wages, culling staff or exploring casual and temporary hires.
• Amount of overtime pay given: Sometimes overtime hours are necessary, such as when treating a patient in an emergency takes providers past closing hours. Other times, overtime hours are less critical, such as staying after hours to complete paperwork or spending too much time with each patient.
• Supply and equipment costs: Financial metrics weigh the benefit and expense of each medical device the clinic or hospital uses. State-of-the-art devices may be expensive, but their benefit may provide a worthwhile return on the investment. Conversely, a clinic or hospital may opt for the bare essentials to cut expenses. Other considerations include keeping enough medications on hand to meet patient demand.
• Other expenses: Electrical, heating, water and other utility bills are necessary to provide adequate patient care. Still, finding ways to cut back on these expenses increases financial productivity.

The traditional methods of measuring healthcare productivity are quantitative rather than qualitative. A clinic may reduce open hours or hire only essential staff to maximize productivity. Doctors may also prioritize brevity when seeing patients, making quick decisions and only pushing for more details when significant concerns arise.

By focusing on time and financials, traditional methods focus on patient volume rather than the patients themselves, their needs and satisfaction with their care. Likewise, by disregarding patient satisfaction, these methods answer only half of the question of productivity. Decreased patient satisfaction can undermine such productivity methods.

Other Methods to Measure Productivity in Healthcare

For patients, quality of care is far more critical than quantitative evaluations. The outputs of services delivered return as inputs when patients leave positive reviews. Such reviews increase a practice’s reputation and can draw in more patients.

Patient Visit Lengths

Since each patient’s time is valuable, you want to respect their time. Often, knowing whether to shorten or lengthen patient visit lengths depends on patient satisfaction. If your patients are frustrated with how long appointments take, shortening them may be necessary. On the other hand, you should consider taking more time with each appointment if patients feel rushed and misunderstood.

The traditional productivity metric with patient visit lengths is to keep them as short as possible so you can see the most patients per day. While brevity still matters, patients appreciate feeling understood and heard rather than rushed and dismissed.

Spending an extra couple of minutes with patients may seem counterintuitive from a productivity standpoint. Yet, it involves making the most of each appointment. Patients will feel that your clinic and staff do the utmost to care for patient health.

Either way, ensure each physician at your medical facility records patient visit lengths. Doing so helps determine whether you should shorten or lengthen appointments to enhance productivity.

Patient Wait Times

For patients, brevity matters most in the waiting room. Still, it’s better to shorten patient wait times through greater administrative efficiency than rushing appointments.

Making checking in and seeing a provider as efficient as possible for patients may be the best option. Focusing on administrative factors lets you shorten wait times without harming patient outcomes. To measure this factor, have staff record check-in times and the beginning of each appointment when the provider sees the patient.

Patient Satisfaction Rates

Patient satisfaction is the ultimate metric for qualitative productivity evaluations. Unless patients provide unprompted feedback, it’s often unclear how satisfied patients are with your services. Clinics without such information interpret data such as patient retention rates, missed appointments and wait times to determine patient satisfaction.

To measure patient satisfaction accurately, ask patients to provide feedback. Such feedback may come in questionnaires, direct interviews or email and text forms. Ask detailed questions about the quality of care patients receive, and leave room for additional comments.

Patient Retention Rates

Patients who are satisfied with your clinic’s services are more likely to return for follow-up appointments. Many factors influence patient retention rates. Some are outside your control, while others, like patient satisfaction, directly relate to the quality of care. Keeping track of patient retention rates through data analytics can give you insight into the quality of care your clinic provides. If you notice low retention rates, review patient feedback to diagnose the issue. Reasons for low retention rates can include long wait times or insufficient care quality.

Related Article: Performance Measurements in the Healthcare Industry

Improve Productivity With Pathstone

At Pathstone, our healthcare consulting experts can help you improve financial and operational performance in healthcare settings without sacrificing patient outcomes. Contact us today to learn more about how Pathstone can enhance your productivity.

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