The P Word and Technology

Every agency faces the P word with angst. Managers need it to meet their budgets but have little control over it. Clinical staff dreads the subject because they feel management doesn’t think they’re doing their jobs. It’s not enough to be on time to document their notes or have favorable outcomes with their clients. The P word overshadows everything.

The P Word, if you didn’t already guess, stands for Productivity.

Agencies are measured by the amount of time they have their staff spend face-to-face with their clients—the hours spent in actual treatment. But to better understand how to help staff be more productive, agencies have to know what makes staff productive.

Productivity is a function of at least five different variables: 

Billing, as the more staff spend with their clients, the higher their hours are.

Documentation, because staff must chart what they’ve done or they cannot bill their services. 

Supervision, to learn from their clinical manager the best way to treat their patient. 

Staff expertise- their ability to engage clients, find the right treatment for them, and use these treatment tools in their sessions. The more they know what to do, the higher their productivity. 

The final factor in the P word is training. Staff in most agencies don’t get the skills to treat their clients in school, and they yearn for ways to deal with crises, high-risk clients, and what to tell parents.

Technology can be a friendly companion to productivity. It can’t see the client for the staff. But it can:

Develop the interventions and complement documenting. 

Extend the supervisor’s knowledge to provide skills.

Improve staff expertise through exposing skills in engaging and treating.

Train the staff on new strategies.

What ends up happening is that staff don’t fear the P word. Because they have more tools in their tool kit to work with clients, even the tough ones. Better tools reduce cancelations and improve how the staff works with clients to get their billing hours up as a rule, not an exception.

For more information on how Praxes uses technology to improve productivity, please contact us.