Real Time Metrics

How long would it take for you to learn of a problem on your front desk? I've encountered the situation several times (illness, incompetance) and unfortunately the answer for our clinic is 3 months. I've posted before that wait times could be the yard stick by which health care is measured but as a measure of front desk performance it is too slow and non-specific a metric.

In our case, the office could maintain reasonable wait times while still diminishing in quality meausres such as revenue and recall lists. We use real time measures for wait time, revenue and organic growth. But what is the most sensitive measure of a problem on the front desk? The answer appears to be frequently occuring events such as hang-up rates, EDI error rates, and errors with day-end statements.

These measures are sensitive but not specific meaning that the are likely to go change when somone is having a problem but there are many other causes for them to change. When a person, falls outside of one standard deviation of the normal then we drill down to take a deeper look if there is a problem.