Is Your Staff Optimized?
By Dick Haines, President, Medical Design International (MDI)

NOTE: Dick Haines will be one of our speakers at the 2004 NCMGM Fall Conference.  Dick will be presenting "Is Your Staff Optimized" on Friday, September 24th.

For 25 years Medical Design International has helped doctors optimize their productive opportunity.  MDI has done this through clinic design, efficient patient flow design, implementation of communication systems, recommendations on staffing patterns and physician and staff education.  In this process, MDI has defined the four primary characteristics that control a physician’s ability to be personally effective.  We refer to these as the 4-S’s of physician productivity – style, staff, systems and space.  A doctor will work at the rate supported by the slowest of these four elements.

Staff is one of the key components of the 4-S system and of a doctor’s ability to be effective.  But for a staff member to be effective, s/he has to have a job description that is not inherently in conflict with itself.  The time requirements for a staff member’s performance changes depending on where that individual works in the patient management cycle.  So it is important to get a particular staffer’s production capabilities in sync with other elements in the patient throughput process.  Under-staffing a little can be far more damaging than overstaffing a little.  In accomplishing this, you, and your doctor, will learn why it is very important for staff to have “time on their hands.”  Your doctor will learn why it is important to look at the value of his/her time freed up, not just the raw cost of a staff person or process.

Artificial bottlenecks in the patient flow process need to be eliminated.  Ultimately, the entire clinic needs to function with the physician, not any particular staff member or function, as the primary constraint to production.  This talk will look at the drivers that affect different staff members – all with the goal of optimizing doctor output, clinic input, and staff throughput.

Dick Haines is president of Atlanta-based Medical Design International (MDI), a recognized leader in the medical design and architectural field with comprehensive services for consulting, space planning and design.  With over 35 years of architectural and design experience, Mr. Haines is widely acknowledged by his colleagues as one of the industry's top medical space planners and is often published in prominent trade journals and publications, as well as being in demand as as a guest speaker, having made more than 60 presentations during his career to a varied group of professional and medical organizations.

Thank you to our 2004 Alliance Sponsors.  Click on the sponsors' name to visit their web site:

Platinum Level
Medical Mutual

Silver Level
RSM McGladrey

Bronze Level
Applied Medical Systems
Archivus
C&S Research Corporation
Digital Sales and Service
Dixon Hughes, PLLC
Gotham Images Inc.
Grant & Grant, LLC
Heathcare Enterprises
MAG Mutual Insurance
Marshall Erdman & Associates