Guest guest Posted September 21, 1998 Report Share Posted September 21, 1998 RE: Mark's post -- Hear! Hear! Good insight, Mark! We must balance professionalism and economic realities. Dick Hillyer Hillyer Associates, Inc. Town & Country PT, Inc. rwhpt@... ______________________________________________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 21, 1998 Report Share Posted September 21, 1998 Lance, > Consolidate the admin process, 1 head office >and a questionable organization to run it? Hold on, fun times to come. Just watching the current mess in Washington every night on the evening news really gets me all excited about a government-sponsored single payor system. Oh yeah, bring it on! Mark Dwyer, MHA, PT mdwyer1@... ______________________________________________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 29, 1998 Report Share Posted September 29, 1998 I am the manager of a PT department in an acute care hospital. I also carry a 50-100% case load. We see both inpatients and outpatients. The therapists have the opportunity to rotate in each area. In June of '96, the hospital hired " efficiency experts " to look at our productivity. Their goal was 100%!!! (8 hours X 4 units /hr). We felt 75% was reasonable. After much observation, time keeping of all staff actions and charting, we actually ended up at about 80% over the six month period. For outpatient, where you can often manage 2-3 patients at a time, productivity still manages to average 80% per therapist. Since the techs also deliver modalities under supervision, we track their productivity. This includes units of service (non-billable) for preparing hotpacks, setting up EMS, traction and whirlpools, etc. Somebody has to do these things and you need to account for their time in order to justify staff levels. Inpatients are a much different matter. There are so many things that can interfere with efficient delivery of PT services. One-on-one is the minimum need. Frequently it is 2-3 (staff) on one (patient). We are a Level II trauma center. For example, to gait a trauma patient with a chest tube, fractured leg, head injury, 2 or more IV poles can take, say, 3 staff people. If you do this for 0-15 minutes, you can only bill for one unit of service, but we had to pay salary for 3 units (3 staff X 1unit of service). We have to have adequate staff in order to safely deliver patient care! We track the frequency for each unit of service that takes 1, 2, and 3 or more staff to deliever it and can come up with staffing levels. As such, our productivity for inpatients has consistently ranged from 59% - 65% per therapist. It seems that no matter how much we try to be more efficient, 65% is about tops. Re: efficiency >You stated that you expect 25-26 units per PT or PTA. Do you have techs or aids working with them? Is this in an acute hospital setting, or outpatient? If you do use techs or aids, do you not include them in your productivity expectations? We count PT's, PTA's, and Techs in a division and expect 20 units/day/person in those 3 job classifications, because in our state, as long as the patient is seen for one of his treatments by the PT each day, the tech can see them the other time. Therefore, the tech is accountable for billable units each day, as long as supervisory regs are being followed. Thanks for your input. It really helps us to compare apples and apples, and see if we are in the ballpark. > >>>> " Mark Dwyer " 09/14 10:54 PM >>> >Carol, > >Your goal of 140 billable 15 minute units per day for 2 PT's and 3 PTA's (28 >units per therapists = 7 treatment hours per day per therapist) is close to >what we expect. We allow 6.5 hours per day for patient care and expect >25-26 units. That may change when we go under PPS, but the fact is that we >exceed 25 units fairly often. This is the expectation for PT and OT. > >Mark Dwyer, MHA, PT >Kansas City, Kansas >mdwyer1@... > > > > >______________________________________________________________________ > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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