What, exactly, does a good workflow look like?

No office is 100% efficient, so every office has room for improvement. But where to begin? The easiest way to improve your office workflow is to figure out what needs work. In any office, there are day-to-day frustrations everyone faces, and then there are specific bad habits that your staff can remedy with a little time and focus.

“The goal is to avoid waiting for someone else to do their job so you can do yours,” Moore writes. She uses McDonald’s as an example of optimal efficiency. “When an order comes in, the fry guy drops a basket in the fryer, the burger girl flips a patty, and the clerk rings up the sale and fills a soda, while the customer fumbles for change. They don’t need to coordinate. No one forgets the pickles. Everything is ready when it needs to be.”

Roles are distinguished, resources are always ready to go, and no two people do the exact same job. Your medical practice can be just as quick and precise, as long as you root out your problems first.

Here are some common flaws you may see in your office.

Do staff and clients seem to repeat themselves?

Do members of your office staff start a task, only to be told partway through that someone else has already completed it? Do your clients complain of giving the same information to three different staff members in one visit? If these are common problems in your office, you may need to adjust your workflow. Think through the path a typical client would take at your office. Will your client have to visit the front desk multiple times, or loop back to certain locations throughout one visit? Do you have clients give information in an exam room that could be provided at the start of a visit, freeing up valuable treatment space? And, when your client leaves, do they have clear direction from you and office staff for future visits, or do they call the office when they’re home to ask questions?

Your clients should be able to travel a clear path and really complete their appointment, without needing to follow up outside the office. Try diagramming out the process so you can see any problems visually. If you’re having trouble tracking the flow for an average client and pinpointing bottlenecks, try giving clients a simple survey to fill out as they cycle through the office.  Making clients’ visits more efficient starts with your staff workflow. For example, do your front desk staff ask the same questions of every client? If so, they could be gleaning unnecessary information for some clients, and not enough for others. After all, a client coming in for follow-up meeting has different needs than someone considering alternatives in their application. Your office staff can avoid unnecessary double-questionings by developing different intake paperwork for different types of applicants.

Does everyone in your office know their duties?

This is the opposite of in-office redundancy: the classic “I thought Jim did that” situation. It slows the whole office down when a staff member has to track down someone who didn’t provide information necessary for billing, or when an application looks spotty because chunks of data are absent. When your staff has specific duties, it’s much easier to distribute resources and estimate time commitments, and it doesn’t leave any last-minute scrambling at the end of the day. To improve workflow in your office, assign generic tasks like “gather information” to different staff departments, and help develop specific subtasks that can be assigned to individuals.

Can you draw a timeline of a day in your office?

In your office, are tasks completed when people cross paths, or at a regular time every day? There’s still a limit to what can be done in a day—and it all needs to get done. It may be time to assess your time management. A great example of this is phone messages.  Examine how often [phone] messages are delivered to staff. Do you have a Janie Jump Up? This would be the staff member who leaves her desk every time she has a message of any kind to deliver, leaving the phones short-staffed or unattended. Or do you have a Let It Wait Linda? She delivers messages at the end of the day – all of them, all at once. Staff who thought they were done suddenly are staring at work they had not budgeted for, possibly resulting in overtime expenses for the office.”

Try to set timeframes in your office that maximize total efficiency. If staff can take turns delivering messages in morning, afternoon and evening phases, for example, you can make sure the phones never go unstaffed. You can use the same strategy for tasks that often costs valuable time. Setting these deadlines enforces good habits and prevents in-office traffic jams.

Are communication lines clear, open and accessible to everyone?

The cornerstone of all these steps is communication. You don’t just need specific duties; you need staff to know who does what. clients can’t be expected to know their visit timeline; they need guidance from staff along the way to make the most of their time in-office. No one can dictate what your office culture is like, but do make sure open communication is a major tenet.  Even if members of your team don’t work together directly, they should still feel comfortable communicating with one another, and be willing to critique and praise each other as well. One of the best ways to optimize new technology is to constantly reassess your processes, so encourage staff to make recommendations, and praise innovative solutions that streamline your office workflow.

Can you clearly explain your billing process?

Make sure your desk staff can answer common questions about payment processes. This is also where those open communication lines come in handy—your desk staff should be able to ask in-house experts for help in talking to clients. Make sure your clients receive updates on any process or application changes, too, to make transitional phases easier all around.
Like all parts of office management, adjusting your workflow is a constant process. As your business grows, technology updates and policies change, you’ll need to tweak your systems to maximize efficiency.

Don’t be afraid to make some major shifts, but do remember to change one thing at a time, so you can tell if new tactics are working. An efficient office means less stress for staff, which is good for clients, too.