Ready to run a stress-free cardiology practice?
A large cardiology specialist group needs more than just manual diary books, faxes and ledgers to ease the stress of everyone’s busy schedules. Let’s take a look at some simple time-saving tips for a more seamless, efficient and collaborative cardiology practice.
The competing demands of cardiology
According to the British Medical Journal, cardiology embodies a very unique blend of hands-on practical application and a continually evolving evidence base. Patient care is approached holistically through primary and secondary prevention, with tailored treatments employing medical, percutaneous, and surgical interventions.
It is also a highly competitive specialty, the BMJ highlighted. And having ‘ticked the boxes and jumped the hurdles’ to become a cardiologist, daily workflow inefficiencies shouldn’t get in the way of success.
Take the complexity out of scheduling
Today’s fast-paced specialist practice demands more efficient and streamlined ways to manage a busy schedule, while enhancing the patient experience. And scheduling in a large cardiology group can be extremely challenging, particularly if specialists and staff are constantly moving between hospitals and multiple practice locations.
For instance, Peninsula Cardiology Group is a specialist practice comprising both general and interventional cardiologists, with four sites across the North Shore and Northern Beaches in NSW. Employing 6 full-time cardiologists, and a team of nurses, sonographers and support staff, the cardiologists from Peninsula Cardiology are always on the move. This means rostering needed to be as organised as quickly as possible.
“From day to day, our cardiologists, nurses and support staff move from practice-to-practice, so things can get quite complicated,” Practice Manager Liz Morton said.
Prior to implementing MedicalDirector’s Bluechip and Clinical software solution, the practice group was using a competitor product, using old-fashioned, paper-based manual diaries to manage the specialists’ schedules.
“But everything changed when one of the specialists saw another practice using Bluechip, and was very impressed with its features and functionality,” Liz said.
It didn’t take long after implementing MedicalDirector’s integrated solution that Peninsula Cardiology Group began to enjoy even greater efficiency outcomes. In particular, managing the daily workflow complexities of a team of roaming specialists became a breeze.
“We can easily manage the scheduled list for the sonographer against the doctor’s list for the day, meaning the day runs smoothly,” Liz added.
Organising cardiology test results
A busy cardiologists running different tests needs a seamless way to organise, view and analyse results to ensure more efficient and accurate patient outcomes. A simple, easy to use colour-coding system can save time and make workflow much smoother, which is something Peninsula Cardiology Group discovered when using Bluechip practice management software.
“What we’ve particularly found useful is that all our cardiologists run different tests, and the colour-coding within Bluechip helps to effectively organise all the different types of tests,” Liz said.
Technology that empowers cardiology
Software shouldn’t get in the way of cardiology, but instead, should empower more agile, collaborative and efficient workflow systems.
For instance, Peninsula Cardiology Group have been using MedicalDirector’s integrated solution for ten years, and have found the software system is so simple to understand and navigate, that practice managers, new specialists and support staff can get up and running with little or no training.
“When I started working here eight years ago, I actually taught myself how to use the software, that’s how easy it is to use,” Liz added. “Plus as more cardiologists join our growing team, it’s easy for us to just add on another software license. They also don’t have time for lots of training sessions and workshops, so they like the fact they can just come in and work it out fairly quickly.”
Over the years, as healthcare admin and needs have continued to evolve, Peninsula Cardiology Group have been very impressed with MedicalDirector’s agile approach to innovation.
“The software is always evolving to meet the needs of today’s specialists, which we really like,” Liz explained. “And the support team are so easy to talk to, helpful and friendly. I don’t even need my IT team to help when I update our software, I just do the updates myself.”
