Practice organisation: Significant savings potential in working time

Facts and figures on the German health care system.

What it’s all about

Practice owners often react sceptically when confronted with the information that an average of 20% of working time can be saved in medical practices. For them it is inconceivable that their working time should be disposable at all. Two reasons lead to this attitude.

Self-confident without alternatives

Because of their close involvement in the daily routine of the practice, doctors are often unable to take a self-critical look at their routines. „There’s no other way!“ is how one doctor describes his behaviour of bringing all documents to the reception desk himself on the occasion of a practice analysis. His working principle has manifested itself over time in constantly recurring actions that he feels are correct. Therefore, it does not even occur to him to examine alternative processing models. He is part of the problem himself and cannot look at it objectively from the outside.

The search for the big solution

When physicians consider organisational alternatives, they usually look for a „big“ solution. Their hope is to turn a single adjusting screw and adjust the entire system in this way. However, effective and sustainable organisational optimisation results from the adaptation, combination and coordination of many small changes, from which a new practice order then emerges synergistically.

The key is found internally in the practice

Practice owners who develop an awareness of their organisational deficits and the opportunities that arise from eliminating them often do not even need to leave their own practice when looking for „first aid“: often no one knows more precisely than the medical assistants where the problems lie and how they can be eliminated. But unfortunately, practice owners talk about such things with their staff far too rarely or do not implement suggestions.