Recruiting and retaining qualified employees has become more challenging than ever for medical practices. Staff members are now required to juggle more and more tasks and employee burnout is increasing due to changing reimbursement trends and value-based care initiatives.

This leaves many providers feeling the pinch in hiring and retaining employees. Fortunately, there is technology available that practices can use to overcome these challenges and rest easy knowing that their staffing dollars are being wisely utilized and their employees are not being pushed beyond their limits.
 
First, let’s take a look at the reason behind the difficulties most practices have when it comes to their staff.
 
A practice is only as good as its employees, but as more payers gravitate toward value-based payment models and increased emphasis is placed on effective team-based medicine, maintaining staff will be critical to practice success. Yet, while these changes make recruiting and retaining top talent vital, they also make it more difficult.
 
Complexity is impacting practices both clinically and administratively as well. When staff members are faced with additional workload, often it is without first being provided with the necessary tools and education.
 
Faced with this challenge, some staff members go about their day racing from one task to another, feeling increasing stress as they try to accomplish multiple, often competing demands. They feel they cannot get out from under the weight of their work and are therefore not able to do their very best. As a consequence, some staff members are seeking jobs that are more defined (and less chaotic), with less potential for burnout.
 
Now that we’ve clarified the causes behind these staffing challenges, let’s take a closer look at the technology, you can use in your practice to overcome them.
 
Automated Medical Indexing Frees Up Staff Time
 
The medical industry’s move to paperless records has turned the management of patient files into an administrative burden. Although employee time is no longer needed to handle paper charts, it’s now being monopolized by the ever-increasing challenge of digital records.
 
While most medical practices understand that manual indexing is both inefficient and error-prone, creating gaps in data collection and performance monitoring, ultimately impacting patient care, many still rely on it for their day-to-day indexing needs.
 
This leaves a practice’s already overworked staff to index each record, from physician notes and referrals to lab and imaging results – with very little time to make sure it’s done correctly. And, when a record is misfiled, it leaves staff scrambling to search for the information needed.
 
Fortunately, there is a solution – automated medical records indexing. By automating the reconciliation process and delivering documents to your electronic medical record system, you can take indexing literally out of your staff’s hands, decreasing the number of tasks they are required to juggle each day and your overall staffing needs, all while improving your bottom line and patient care.
 
Another benefit of automated indexing is that it identifies the right patient record and places it into the correct patient file, eliminating human error. Consequently, your staff spends less time searching for lab and imaging results, referrals and more, eliminating frustration and decreasing burnout.
 
What staffing challenges do you face in your own practice and how have you used technology to overcome them?