Make These 3 Changes to Your Hospital’s Scheduling

How does your hospital handle scheduling?

In many cases, different areas of the hospitals maintain their own calendars and conduct their own scheduling independent of the rest of the hospital. Failing to have one central calendar can lead to the pre-encounter process being chaotic and often mistake-ridden.

Here are 3 tips we at PRC (Revco Solutions) recommend for assistance in centralizing your hospital’s calendar.Scheduling can therefore become a significant barrier in the patient payment process because providers are on different pages and are operating around their schedule rather than the schedule of the hospital as a whole. Centralizing scheduling is an important step hospitals must take to better streamline the patient payment procedures.

1. Establish ONE calendar that is easily accessible. At PRC (Revco Solutions) we recommend looking into an online calendar integration platform or hosting website that allows for access by any of your staff, at anytime, at any location. It’s time to do away with separate agendas and the old paper calendars. Utilizing one central online calendar will allow for easy input, easy organization, and regular updating from all areas of your hospital. You will therefore always have the most up-to-date scheduling information for patients all in one place.
2. Encourage employees to solely make use of the centralized calendar. There’s no use in creating a centralized calendar if your hospital staff isn’t fully on board. Stress to employees the importance of only using this calendar to schedule and avoid using personal and area-specific calendars, which can lead to miscommunication in the scheduling process.
3. Maintain clearly distinctive areas within the calendar. While having all scheduling data in the same location is an important step in improving the pre-encounter process, make sure to allow for specific areas within the hospitals to still appear differentiated within the calendar. For example, color coding radiology and occupational therapy differently will allow the individual areas and providers to see what data is pertinent to them.

Consider implementing a centralized calendar at your hospital. The outcome will allow you to better serve patients and streamline payments and procedures. Centralize your hospital’s calendars to save time and money.