Team-Based Medical Care: Assembling Support Teams Per Physician

They say that there is no “I” in “team”, and that great things can be achieved when we all work together. This philosophy rings true, especially when it comes to team-based medical care.

Team-based medical care is a medical workplace system that has been gaining popularity as it continues to prove its effectiveness in helping deal with high patient loads, improve workplace efficiency, and help battle against physician burnout. 

But what exactly does team-based medical care mean, and what specific advantages does it offer your medical facility? Keep reading below to learn more. 

What Is Team-Based Medical Care?

Team-based medical care, as its name suggests, is the process of delivering health services through a collaborative team working with patients and caregivers to achieve high-quality outcomes. 

Team-based patient care helps shift the burden of decision-making tasks away from the physician and allows different team members to work to the best of their ability to meet various patient and administrative needs.

This idea of team-based care doesn't mean that you need to add more staff. Instead, it can be achieved through redistributing the work among current employees. 

There are several team-based medical roles, such as:

• Physicians
• Care coordinators
• Wellness coaches
• Social workers
• Medical assistants
• Office nurses
• Front office staff
• Telemedicine
  
  

Why Physicians Need Support Teams

Support teams are a huge boost to workplace productivity, and help relieve physicians of many time-consuming tasks, such as:

• Filling out insurance forms
• Answering phone calls
• Greeting patients
• Scheduling appointments
• Organizing medical and financial records
• Completing prior authorizations and referrals

For this reason, physicians need support teams in order to make patient care their highest priority. 

3 Advantages of Team-Based Medical Care

In case it hasn’t become readily apparent yet, there are several advantages that come with team-based medical care. And even though the purpose of team-based care is to help put more time on the plate of physicians for patient care, they’re not the only ones who benefit from it.

Three of the biggest advantages that team-based care offers for a medical facility include:

• Improved patient care
• Higher facility efficiency
• Reduced physician burnout
  
  

Improved Patient Care

The collaboration that comes with team-based medical care naturally helps to improve not only patient care, but patient satisfaction as well. This is a result of improved organization and communication, along with the physician’s improved ability to provide this care.

By collaborating with one another, a medical team can help to improve patient outcomes while also preventing simple medical errors that can, at times, occur when a physician is overwhelmed and not able to put their full focus on individual patient care. 

Another key aspect in ensuring patient satisfaction is by engaging with the patient and their family. Research shows that by increasing patient and family engagement, patients gain a better understanding of not only what their treatment is going to be, but why they are getting the treatment to begin with. This alone works wonders for patient satisfaction, and is not always something that a single physician has time to handle.

Higher Facility Efficiency

Inefficiency is an incredibly frustrating setback, for both medical facility employees and patients being treated. After all, you want to feel like a high priority when you check into a hospital for any reason.

With team-based medical care’s strategy of redistributing administrative tasks, many processes are streamlined and help free up every worker’s schedule. Team-based care also allows each employee on the team to function at the top of their license, which improves the engagement of every team member.

An efficient team is a healthy team, and every member serves a vital role in improving facility efficiency
.

Reduced Physician Burnout

Typically, a physician is in a commanding role that comes with several unique responsibilities alongside patient care. Not only can this quickly become overwhelming, but it’s perhaps the leading cause of the physician burnout crisis that the country is facing. In fact, almost half of interviewed physicians reported burnout.

Reducing physician burnout is vital for keeping consistent, high-quality patient care in your facility. And by switching to team-based medical care, you’re allowing for your physicians to put more time and energy into their patient care. 

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

It’s not difficult to recognize all of the advantages that team-based medical care has for medical facilities. In fact, it may be the exact transition you need to improve your patient care and keep your physicians feeling fresh and focused.

If you would like additional information, or help with taking the first steps toward team-based medical care, then feel free to reach out to us using the button below.