Staffing, Slots, and Satisfaction Scores - Oh My: Channeling Curiosity to Combat Productivity Challenges in the Ambulatory Care Setting

Do you struggle to deliver care that is timely and easy to access while responsibly managing resources and engaging employees? As healthcare leaders face challenges related to spending, financial stewardship is non-negotiable. Staffing to volume is key to success. Context of care delivery and skill mix is variable across hospitals. These considerations are important for ambulatory care leaders to understand and influence as they aim to meet benchmarking goals, productivity standards, and satisfaction scores.
The subspecialty clinic at this hospital consistently failed to meet benchmarking targets. Leaders made continued efforts including not requesting replacement positions, modifying templates to improve efficiency, engaging providers in seeing more patients, and problem-solving processes to improve slot utilization. The productivity outcome did not waiver, and they began to feel the impact from reduction in staff.
Leaders on the team leveraged their curiosity to dive deeper. After reaching out to peer groups, it became apparent there were variations in how groups were categorizing positions from a prospect benchmarking perspective.
Leaders at this Midwest hospital led an innovative initiative to standardize how positions are categorized across peer groups to ensure skill mix among like clinics is being measured in the same fashion. Leaders spent time comparing the skill mix to like clinics, proposing the change to local leaders, and working together to align how positions are categorized.
In Spring 2024, implementation occurred across all peer groups in this Midwest region. It resulted in a shift for this clinic’s paid hours per unit of service from 2.05 (above prospect 75th percentile) to 1.46 (below prospect 40th percentile), demonstrating a more accurate depiction of the current state in terms of productivity. Positions were then approved for replacement, which led to an improvement in patient/family satisfaction scores. These scores improved from 70% to over 80%, exceeding the target of 71%. Template modifications resulted in slot utilization decreasing from 19% unfilled to below the target of 8% unfilled. Employee viewpoint scores demonstrated a 17% improvement in favorability as staff cited improvement in staff-to-staff interactions and respect.
Learning outcome: Attendees will learn key takeaways regarding how to use a collaborative, innovative approach to better understand and realign staffing resources in the ambulatory care setting. This will allow learners to maximize productivity, positively affect patient outcomes, and improve staff satisfaction. Presentation structure will include how to interpret productivity metrics as well as how to leverage curiosity to achieve success. It will also include how to implement a similar model.