Primary Care Application
1. As an administrator, you need to assess this situation: How would you determine if there was a true need for another receptionist? Do you need to reinstate the position or can you retrain the current number of employees? Why?
There’s no simple formula that one can apply to every practice because each specialty and each situation requires something different. It is very important to right size your staffing as understaffing can cause patient dissatisfaction, frustration, and staff burnout (Whaley, 2011). Overstaffing can cause lower productivity, reduction in profit and never really getting to the root of why some problems exist. As the number of providers grows, so does the need for more staff to check patients in or check patients out. Floating staff between these positions can be a temporary solution before adding any full time staff in each of these areas (Whaley, 2011). Using a patient check in kiosk could also minimize any of the extra added stress of checking in many patients arriving simultaneously. When employees are pulled between answering the phone and working with the patient in front of them, maybe it would be time to consider a separate phone position away from the front desk as well to relieve the desk receptionists (Whaley, 2011).
2. As an administrator, describe the effects that labor shortages of key personnel and rising costs of labor have on profitability. How would you determine how to allocate your money? Be sure to think critically about the impact that quality outcomes and patient outcomes have on financial resources.
While the costs of increasing labor are obvious and easy to measure, the benefits are often indirect and not immediately felt. One benefit of increased labor is improved quality. That increasing the amount of labor in the facility is associated with higher profitability through its positive impact on customer satisfaction, which would intern increase profitability...