“We’ve been able to decrease our square footage, and even exceed our patient numbers by 50 percent.”
Located in Houston, TX, Bayshore Family Practice Center originated as a small husband and wife physician practice, and now has been providing care and serving the community for over 30 years. Currently the largest primary care practice in southeast Harris County, the medical staff includes 5 physicians, and 4 physician extender, and 43 additional staff members. Bayshore Family Practice Center’s goal is always to keep their patients first, in care, customer service, compassion, and quality, while providing excellent service.
Bayshore Family Practice Center (BFPC) was using a flag system to notify staff as they passed by the treatment exam rooms. According to Donna Jones, COO at Bayshore Family Practice Center, flags were being overlooked, were not always cleared immediately following a patient’s treatment, and did not prevent the use of overhead messaging. Staff could not move forward with another patient until the flag was cleared, causing patient flow issues. The flag system was not very effective nor did it allow the productive use of staff time.
BFPC recently moved into a smaller location (from 15,000 sq. ft. with 35 exam rooms to 9000 sq ft. with 18 exam rooms), and were concerned with the need to build an equal number of treatment/exam rooms as their previous facility, in order to support patient volume and manage patient flow.
Bayshore Family Practice Center chose LRS’ Netpage PC staff paging solution along with the one-touch room-to-room staff paging system to improve staff productivity, communication, and patient flow.
Eighteen push-button transmitters were mounted outside individual exam rooms, away from tampering by patients, and allowing easy access for nurses and physicians to use the system to instantly send a message. Each of the buttons were pre-programmed with a different message so that when pressed, the message was sent to a staff member’s alphanumeric pager who’s assigned to that room. Once a message is received and upon completion of the task, staff are required to acknowledge the receipt.
The NetPage software was installed on every computer in the office, and staff member names were programmed into the system along with an assigned pager number. Each staff member was equipped with an LRS staff alphanumeric pager. As staff members need to contact one another, from their PC, they select the person’s name, a desired pre-programmed message, and send the page to the staff member’s alphanumeric pager.
Improved staff productivity and HIPAA compliance
Netpage has allowed staff to be notified wherever they are, and has eliminated the use of overhead paging. According to Jones, “The silent [encrypted] paging provides compliance to HIPAA’s privacy of notifications regulation, as well as, providers are not interrupted unnecessarily.” The system has helped keep providers organized, improving staff response times with instant communication and detailed messaging. “The staff and providers are better prepared, on time, and even more professional, and the patients love the quiet professional surrounding,” said Jones.
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