Managing a professional practice is no joke. The number of tasks, projects and daily duties can become daunting without a proper way to prioritize them. Sure, you can leave sticky notes on your desk, create a spreadsheet or write in your planner, but these methods usually fall short and only act as reminders. 

Understanding workflows and how to organize them is the first step in optimizing your team’s time and creating a great patient experience.

What is a Workflow?

A workflow is a repeatable series of tasks assigned to team members that are completed in a specific order to achieve common goals. 

Like the word, this process allows your tasks to “flow” and can help you identify ways to improve your operations.

Without this process, tasks can be jumbled up and steps can be missed. By utilizing a visual workflow, you can see each step of the process and prioritize tasks in the order they need to be completed to achieve your desired results.

Benefits of Workflows 

Other than keeping your practice organized and on schedule, workflows have other great benefits.

Improves Time Management

• A workflow enables you to stay on track with your time. With due dates and scheduled times for tasks, team members are able to plan their day accordingly to be more productive and complete their assigned projects. 

Makes Your Processes More Efficient

• After time, you will realize where you can be more efficient in each task. The workflow gives you a visual to help identify steps that are unnecessary and maybe using more resources than necessary.

Helps Delegate Tasks

• As a leader, delegating tasks can be difficult for some. With a workflow, you can fairly distribute tasks to everyone in your practice, so you are not putting all the work on yourself.  

Reduces Project Risk

• If you plan everything out in your workflow, you will reduce the risk of missing crucial steps in the process. Oftentimes, things can get overlooked when performing tasks with no specific guidance, so a workflow would be beneficial in eliminating potential missed steps. 

Allows for Accountability and Reduces Micromanaging

• In assigning tasks to team members, the need for micromanaging is eliminated as they are now responsible and accountable for the task at hand. In turn, employee relations are improved as each member is responsible for their own work.

How to Create A Visual Workflow?

Now that you know what a workflow is, it is time to design your own. Start with a simple, yet effective sequential workflow design. A sequential workflow arranges your tasks linearly, where each step is dependent on the one before it. Visually, this is one of the best design strategies to see where each task lays as it progresses forward. 

For example, a workflow in its simplest form would be: 

Work To Be Done: 

• Shows what the task is.
• A short description of the task and when it needs to be done.
• Which team member the task has been assigned to.

In Progress:

• Shows the team member who’s actively working on the task. 
• The status of the task relative to its due date.

Completed:

• The task has been completed and approved.
• Notes about the task’s completion.

A workflow requires customization based on what needs to be done. Complexity can range from a simple office to-do list to an in-depth clinical treatment plan like implant cases. 

With Healier, you can make your workflow as generic or detailed as you see fit to achieve the practice’s goals and keep the team informed and organized.

Tracking Patient Workflows

One of the special features of Healier is that you can also set up patient workflows to track their status, coordinate their care, and share with your team. 

For instance, let’s examine a practice’s billing process. You might create steps for invoicing and instead of creating tasks for team members, you’d add patient names and move the patients forward in columns to track where they are in that workflow. 

In the example above, Jane Doe needs to be sent an invoice. Once that invoice has been sent (by you or someone on your team), the person who sent the invoice would move Jane to the “Pending Invoices” column. 

Once Jane has paid the invoice, they would be moved to the “Paid Invoices” column. All of this helps your team easily know what Jane’s payment status is at a quick glance and helps the person in charge of invoices remember that patient’s payment status.

Your process could be as short as the 3 steps above or go into greater detail including attempts to reach the patient, letters sent, invoices for 30, 60, and 90 days past due, or sent to collections. Your visual workflow should match the steps in your practice’s current billing process.

Organization is Key

While workflows are intended to help organize your practice, they still require your attention. A workflow needs to be updated regularly and checked often to keep the team informed. The right info at the right time will help everyone stay on track and keep the practice running smoothly. 

Setting due dates and reminders within your workflows will help you make sure critical pieces don’t get missed. 

Final Thoughts

Workflows are important to any practice. Whether you want to reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed, incorporate your team members more, or effectively manage your workload, a workflow can help. Your practice will become more engaging and relations will improve with employees and patients as you enforce workflows regularly. 

Healier offers workflow software that can be used in any practice and is simple enough for anyone to use. If you are ready to replace the spreadsheets and sticky notes for better treatment and effortless team communication, try Healier.