Health care facilities are challenged daily with managing patient flow throughout all departments to ensure patients receive efficient care promptly. If the facility has interruptions of care due to missing staff, the resulting delays create significant problems that have a ripple effect across the entire facility. When patients move too fast or too slow throughout a facility, they may suffer harm. Additionally, health care professionals may face disciplinary action and stress due to failing their patients. Patient flow is a complex process that requires balancing interdependent processes to guide patients through care efficiently. However, it is manageable. Here is how an increase in staff can help your organization manage patient flow.
Patient Flow
Patient flow is critical to a patient’s safety, health and satisfaction. With adequate patient flow, hospitals can avoid overcrowded departments, care delivery delays and poor handoffs, ultimately affecting a patient’s health, well-being and satisfaction. When the workflow is efficient, health care staff members experience less stress and improved job satisfaction. By understanding and controlling patient throughput better, hospitals and their patients can expect the following benefits:
- Reduced wait times
- Improved patient care
- Decreased costs
- Increased productivity
Staff Augmentation
The medical staffing ratio is a challenging balancing act. You must cut costs and boost profit margins while maintaining patient safety and quality of care. The correct number of staff members is vital to the quality of patient care. Ongoing assessment of a fluctuating workload is crucial for having the correct number of staff for patients. Employee vacations, sick leave and call-outs can cause problems for workflow.
Staff augmentation starts with a staffing plan. The plan dictates that each patient receives the appropriate care from a health care professional with the relevant skills. When staffing is a problem, you can augment your current staff with a health care staffing agency.
A health care staffing agency gives you flexibility when you are shorthanded. These companies have access to top health care professionals, particularly useful if your labor pool is limited. The flexibility is fantastic, and a medical staffing agency allows you to fill various job needs from a single staffing partner. It is hard to foresee when you will need additional staff. Agencies provide professionals qualified and ready to work on short notice. You can augment your team when you need to with less time spent with on-the-job training.
Power Personnel
The staffing professional at Power Personnel can help you manage your patient flow by providing top-notch health care professionals at a moment’s notice. Staffing problems cause the patient flow to suffer. You can avoid this problem by augmenting your medical team with help from Power Personnel. A partnership with Power Personnel allows your facility to prevent bottlenecks that impact patient flow, resulting in sub-optimal patient care. The services that Power Personnel provides can increase efficiencies, reduce costs and maximize resources.
