Optimizing Clinical Team Productivity and Quality

All healthcare providers and organizations are being challenged to improve outcomes, reduce costs and increase patient satisfaction when delivering care. Are you confident that your nursing and allied health staff are performing their clinical responsibilities as efficiently as they should? Tightening the clinical team's processes is one of the fastest ways to gain efficiencies, reduce costs and move the needle up on quality measures. Optimizing Clinical Team Productivity and Quality provides useful information and tools to help you build efficiencies through appropriate staffing, streamlining patient throughput, utilizing care team members to their highest levels of licensure and much more. This concisely organized text offers a useful overview for new or experienced practice managers with or without a clinical background. It is a handy desk reference for addressing clinical issues and finding solutions for measuring and realizing efficiency in the office. Optimizing Clinical Team Quality and Productivity provides guidance to clinical and nonclinical managers on critical issues, such as: - Patient access - Chronic care management - Clinical supplies - Costs and benefits of nonphysician providers - Documentation - Favoritism - The nurse-physician relationship - Nurses as gatekeepers - Nursing performance problems - Physician assistants vs. nurse practitioners - Population health - Difficult or disruptive physicians - Supervision

About the Author :
Sheila Richmeier, MS, RN, FACMPE, as a rich background in healthcare, with more than 25 years of experience in multiple medical settings both as a clinician and as a practice administrator. She has clinical experience in hospitals as well as home health and physician's office settings. Sheila's medical practice management experience began in the late 1990s when she was a nursing supervisor of an urgent care center in a 55-physician multi-specialty practice. In addition to providing oversight for workers' compensation and risk management, Sheila provided operational assessments to other nursing departments and served as interim manager in oncology. She was later hired as a practice management consultant providing education programs and clinical consulting.In 2008, she started consulting on the national stage with TransforMED, a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She assisted primary care practices to transform to patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) and helped design, implement and oversee PCMH transformation projects. In 2010, Sheila started her own company, Remedy Healthcare Consulting, which provides clinical transformation and team care consulting. She has also developed CareTeam eSolutions to assist medical office team members to work at the top of their role.Sheila is proficient in financial and business office operations and in identifying creative methods in determining clinical staffing needs and efficiencies. Throughout her practice management career, she has managed several primary care clinics and a general surgery practice. Each of these practices has offered challenges in both clinical and business operations. Sheila has excelled in identifying areas in which to increase operational efficiencies. Sheila completed her master's degree in nursing administration at the University of Kansas School of Medicine and is certified as a medical practice executive by the Medical Group Management Association. She is also board certified as a community health nurse by the American Nurses' Credentialing Center. Sheila would love to hear your story. Please email comments and questions to sheila@remedyhc.com.