Tracking productivity

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We are trying to track therapist productivity across all locations they work at. When they are not seeing booked patients, they are doing admin or projects - this is just blocked off with casual appointment blocks.  Some therapists just carry on with admin (letters, liaison, notes) and projects leaving the space available.

What is the best way to track actual productivity so we can see each clinic as a cost centre (although the database is shared from one location) without too much input from the very busy therapists? Ideally we'd like a break down of those admin tasks but can't think of a way besides separate consult codes maybe? But that would require a little too much effort from the therapists.

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Hand Works

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Posted 5 years ago

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5 years ago
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Lakeview

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Agreed! We used to list client names for reminders of letters practitioners needed to write, but that added to there weekly total numbers when calculating how many clients are booked in. It would be great to block out time like we do with casual appointments but link to database information. for instance clients to call, or letters to write that do not add to total numbers and can be tracked independently.
 
5 years ago
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Teresa O'Donnell

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hi Hand Works

I'm not sure if SmartSoft will have a definitive answer for you however I've created a quick work around that means that when I pull the report it gives me a good breakdown of the practitioners work related activity. What we've done is created different 'Appointment Types' for work related functions such as travel, mentoring, PD, reports etc. Then when you need to add these to the diary, just add a 'Group' appointment, and whilst making the appt, over on the right select what kind of appt type it is (travel, study, mentoring etc) and then choose how many spots and close.

We have done this for all our work related activities and it does 2 things, firstly it is easy to see at a quick glance in the diary what kinds of appts the practitioner has coming up. Secondly, when you then pull the productivity report all of these activities will show up and you can then export it and analyse the data all you want!

To set it up, go to system information, appointment book, and then on the right hand side click 'App types' then just add the ones you want and the colours you want and save.

Good luck

Teresa


5 years ago
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Hand Works

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Thanks Teresa. That's the only way we thought of too but have never used group appointments before so I've just had a play around with it, adding Admin - Notes, Admin - Letters and Projects as appointment types first. Works well for reporting (given a patient name is added) but a lot of clicks for a busy therapist trying to rush through their admin.  If a patient isn't assigned to the booking it doesn't show on the report. 

So for Projects which aren't patient-related it doesn't show - so again we're back to the Casual Appointment which doesn't show on the time management report.

Am I taking a wrong turn somewhere?

5 years ago
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Teresa O'Donnell

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hi Hand Works

we don't assign patients to these kind of group appointment bookings either, and when I go to view the report as long as you have it configured by appointment type and also 'count group appt's as single visit' the report works, see the images below, I hope they help:

5 years ago
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Andrew, Community Manager

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Official Response
Hi Hand Works

Teresa has made some great posts on the subject (thank you), so I will just quickly summarise with an official response.

As part of the standard reporting features of Front Desk the Time Management Report can be used to list the number of hours each practitioner has appointments booked, which can be listed by 'Appointment Type' or 'Item Code'. One of the common uses for this report is to track practitioner productivity by comparing the total hours the practitioner is working (external to Front Desk), to the total hours spent with bookings.

The report was designed to track time with patients in particular, rather than projects and administrative work that may also be part of the practitioners day. Casual Appointments can be counted to the hours by deselecting 'Exclude Casual Appointments', as can Group Appointments. 

It is possible to create appointment types or item codes that represent activities other than consultations, such as travel time or meetings if you would like to track these hours individually.

We are happy to hear your ideas on improving this functionality, and gauge the interest in your suggestions by the comments of other users and the number of 'Likes' to your post.  In this case a separate post would be appropriate so your question and answers can still be found easily by others.

As another option, if you are after something quite specific to your business, Smartsoft offers custom programming to be able to create specific reports for individual needs. These services are charged at an hourly rate, and are separate to anything included in your supports and upgrades agreement. It is also possible to engage external IT professionals with skills in Microsoft SQL Server reporting to create your own custom reports.

The advantage of using our services is that any pre-developed algorithms, libraries, and code for reports that we already have available can be used as the starting point for these services at no additional charge.

I hope this helps.
(Edited)
4 years ago
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Kathy

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Further to this, it would be useful to generate a report that show those appointments that were not filled. At the moment, unless an "unfilled" appointment category is created and a bogus patient, there appears to be no way of reporting on lost appointment time.
..any suggestions?
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