THE DIGITAL PRACTICE

Becoming a process-centric practice

Prepare for the top technological trend of the new year.

By Peter J. Polack, MD, FACS

Here’s a New Year’s resolution that I am pleading with every practice in this country to promise to keep: Become process-centric by taking the time for process knowledge transfer.

TRANSFER THAT INFO

Process knowledge transfer is a systematic way of harvesting, standardizing, documenting and transferring the knowledge kept in your tech-savvy human capital (your employees’ heads) and upon which your practice’s continued operation depends.

Our practice learned the hard way about this indispensable process. Our first IT director was a technical genius who transformed our rudimentary technology. He taught our technical systems to communicate with each other and our practice began running smoothly.

But he moved on. Eventually, the system needed attention. But, because we had exercised zero process knowledge transfer, we were caught flat-footed and had to hire help. We lost hundreds of thousands to outside systems contractors because we did not harvest what that IT director kept in his head. We called our mistake “practice CPR” and it became our inside joke: CPR = Continuity, Productivity and Risk.

CENTRALIZED APPROACH

We learned our digital practice wasn’t just a technology inventory. We had become a process-centric practice without a centralized and systematic approach to how our workflows, our technology and our staff needed to interact. We randomly managed some processes and ignored others.

We could absorb these hits because we are a large, top-tier practice and have access to resources. We decided, however, to give the system more than just attention: We decided it needed updating — and so did we.

THREE KEY ELEMENTS

To reach our goal, we had to broaden our thinking beyond workflows into systems. We would have to run our practice as a set of synchronized systems built on three key elements: our people, our processes and our technology.

Knowing the switch to digital would not be instantaneous, we decided that using a hybrid of manual and automated processes would achieve and maintain high performance. Our challenge became one of designing both types for maximum productivity.

A RESOLUTION TO KEEP

As long as our practice functions under this hybrid model, as we certainly will in 2015, we must elevate process knowledge transfer to a high level of importance, second only to revenue cycle management.

Make 2015 the year you model effective behaviors, document critical processes, transfer process knowledge, and develop world-class continuous improvement programs. Keep that resolution. OM

Peter J. Polack, MD, FACS, is co-managing partner for Ocala Eye, a multi-subspecialty ophthalmology practice located in Ocala, Fla. He is also founder of Emedikon, an online practice resource for physicians and administrators. His e-mail is ppolack@ocalaeye.com.