The road map to patient care is the plan. Not one treatment session can be rendered unless the route and endpoint has been established. What specific functional issue has compelled the patient to seek professional help in solving their unique issue and what is the straightest point to achieving resolution to that problem?
As skilled professionals, our unique training and experiences should lead us to success in what percent of the population we serve? Do you know your past performance? This might be a start in developing future success. Know your performance outcomes and continuously work toward improving those measurements.
The route we take is often riddled with many unknowns, yet we overlook the fact that specific answers and lessons in taking the most direct route are within our reach. Have we done the research or homework to develop the best route and have we created the plan to truly meet the ideal with the straightest most direct plan available?
What are the signs, roadblocks and directions to lead us in the future? In the era of GPS, conditionally the answers should be at our fingertips.
Lets start with a few questions.
- What is the highest volume condition treated within your clinic?
- What are the most significant symptoms specific to that problem?
- What was the functional goal measurement to determine success in meeting the plan?
- What skilled treatments were provided in the plan?
- What was the established frequency in the plan for that condition?
- What was the provided frequency?
- Was the stated goal met?
- How many treatments occurred to meet the stated goal?
- What were the total charges toward meeting the stated goal?
Almost all answers lie within the data held within charting. Let me ask again, what percent of the population had success in meeting the stated goal within your population?
At this time in healthcare reform, if your clinic is not already aggregating data like the above, now more than ever, these questions need answers because quality will be measured by outcomes and costs to achieving those outcomes. It will be one of the most potent ways of reducing healthcare costs. Provide only what is needed in the amounts required to be successful. Anything more is wasteful.
More often than not, similar problems will hold similar plans of care to meet successful outcomes. Someone other than our professional skill sets should not dictate the best plan, but it will happen soon. Guidelines for payment often change practice; scrutiny is only just beginning. As professionals we need to know how successful we are in meeting stated objectives and we need to stand behind the outcomes those decisions and unique skill sets have created within our clinics.
Which route will you take?
Read how MediLink’s Outpatient Rehabilitation Software Solution to see how we help improve your facility’s plan of care.
