Management Essentials

The IntRAnet Gives Productivity a Boost

By Farrell “Toby” Tyson, MD, FACS

Though most people are quite familiar with the Internet, many have never heard of an Intranet, much less can explain its uses. An Intranet is a private computer network that securely integrates an organization's computers and may include a secure private Web site for internal use. In the past, to develop and maintain a well-functioning Intranet would require the services of an information technology (IT) specialist—cost prohibitive for many practices. Luckily, advances in technology have made Intranets simpler and more cost effective.

Many corporate insurance carriers now offer turnkey Intranet Web portals as a benefit for your organization. These turnkey solutions allow you to take a standard Web site template and populate it with desired information with minimal effort. The setup is simple enough that an IT specialist is not required, giving staff the ability to setup and update the Intranet Web site. After basic setup, you can allow both local and offsite secure access to your corporate Intranet.

Information Upload

What are Intranet Web sites useful for? One of the real benefits is the storage and dissemination of information. A good starting point is uploading your personnel handbook, giving employees immediate access to the most up-to-date information. By placing the personnel handbook on the Intranet, updates can be made in one place without needing to reprint the manual for all employees. This saves not only on printing cost, but human resources' time that could be better devoted to another project.

As it is an easily accessible repository of corporate information, you can place your health benefit details on your Web site. This allows for basic plan details and phone numbers, as well as links to your health insurance plan's own corporate Web site. By making information easily accessible to your employees, it reduces the burden of questions that constantly arise from lack of knowledge. This can also be expanded to include your workers' comp plan details.

Unexpected Benefits

Online training can easily be incorporated into your Intranet, including basic new hire expectations and forms. As you start to build up your online training section, you can start to include more of your mandatory training such as HIPAA and OSHA training. This provides a central location for your training programs and allows for training from home in the evening or weekend. Links can also be made to other training resources such as certified online continuing medical education for your opticians, technicians and even optometrists and physicians.

Here in Florida we have our own unique uses for the corporate Intranet. Under the constant threat of hurricanes, we are required to write and publish a yearly disaster preparedness plan for our practice and ASC. We needed to provide a communications tree that included staff phone numbers but it had to be secure. The Intranet helped satisfy these requirements. We also published our corporate phone extension directory on the Intranet. With over 90 employees, it had become impossible to remember all the extensions.

As your staff learns to rely on your Intranet, other aspects can be added to help build teamwork and morale. The addition of a company newsletter can help you highlight changes in your practice. Published monthly or bi-monthly, a newsletter can introduce information about new employees or show monthly benchmarks of practice performance and spotlight individuals who excel.

The Intranet obviously helps with knowledge, but it also helps provide a more streamlined organization through transparent supervision. By having all aspects of your practice easily accessible and visible, employees understand the expectations and the rules. This total clarity of the issues simplifies your management head-aches and builds consistency. The cost-effective availability of a simple-to-implement Intranet now allows small practices to be just as productive as larger ones. OM

Farrell C. Tyson, MD, FACS, is a refractive cataract/glaucoma eye surgeon at the Cape Coral Eye Center in Florida. He may be reached at tysonfc@hotmail.com.