“Wasting just 1 hour a day means in 10 years you will have lost 3,650 hours or 152 days of your life. Every hour is important.” –Christopher S. Frings, PhD, CSP, health care consultant and speaker from Birmingham, AL.
If you are in healthcare management, your days are busy and sometimes may even feel just plain crazed. Most days probably feel like there is not enough hours in the day—or days in the week for that matter—to accomplish everything you need to get done. This is why time management skills are critical. Think of time management as a survival skill— in order to survive and thrive you must manage your time effectively.
Here are 3 time management tips for healthcare management to allow you to focus on what matters most.
Establish Goals
The building blocks of time management are goals. Creating goals will also create a sense of purpose for the next week, month or beyond. Set goals that are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. Just take a few minutes at the beginning and end of each week to review your goals, action plan and progress. If something doesn’t align with your goals, it’s easier to say ‘no’ and focus instead on items that do.
You can set goals for rounding to save you time in the hospital. Here are 5 ways you can streamline your patient hospital rounding through purposeful rounding.
Prioritize
It can be difficult to hit the ground running when you arrive for work without prioritizing your day ahead of time. Write out the specific tasks you need to complete each day and the time you need to complete them by. What needs to be done first? Which tasks are urgent? Check your list often, adjust as needed and stay on track. Avoid simply putting the easiest tasks first, and instead tackle the most important items on your list earlier in the day. You’ll be surprised how much you complete when you hold yourself accountable with a prioritized to-do list.
Delegate
To excel as a leader in healthcare management you need to become an effective delegator. Take some time to determine what you currently have on your plate that you can delegate to avoid attempting to juggle too many responsibilities and running the risk of quality of work suffering, or spending too much of your valuable time on things someone else could be helping you with.
To stay afloat in healthcare management, you have to get a grasp on managing your time. Use these time management tips to improve productivity and efficiency.
Download your Guide to a Streamlined Practice and Happy Team for insight into several effective tips to streamline your processes which will allow you and your practice to yield the greatest return on investment possible.
- More About Dr. Sanders
Dr. Gregory Sanders is a Harvard-trained, practicing cardiologist and founder and CEO of HybridChart. He has been coding since the 1980s and has spent his medical career focusing on improving processes. His patient care skills earned him recognition as one of Phoenix Magazine’s TOP DOCs. He lives in Scottsdale with his family.