2001 OPEN FORUM Abstracts
DEVELOPMENT OF APRODUCTIVITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FORPULMONARY FUNCTION
Richard Ford BS RRT, JefferyJohnson BS RRT, Tim Morris MD. University of California San DiegoMedical Center, San Diego, California
Overview:The AARC Uniform Reporting Manual (URM) for Diagnostic Services provides activitytime standards and approach to develop productivity management systems for PFTLabs. There are however, many support activities in the URM that do not includetime standards, as well as activities that cannot be directly captured throughpatient charge systems. In such cases, each facility must assess the natureand duration of these activities and incorporate these ?non-allocated? timesin their productivity monitoring and reporting systems. We describe a methodof collecting information to identify the nature of activities and their associatedduration to develop a productivity management tool for PFT.
Methods: We elected to havestaff complete a daily activity record. The activity record facilitated theentry of an activity description/type, the time it started, the time it ended,and related comments. Detailed instructions were provided to staff to insureconstancy in making entries. Each staff member maintained activity entry overa 2-week period to account for a total of 93 workday profiles and over 600 activityentries. Data was analyzed to identify the type support task and the amountof time a PFT technician spent performing the activity.
Results:
| Activity | Total Timeper 8 Hour Shift |
Caliberationand Prep | 25 |
Equipment Troubleshoot/Service | 10 |
Pagers/Phones/Communications | 10 |
Inservice/Meetings | 10 |
Housekeeping/EquipmentCleaning | 15 |
Customer Service/ClientSupport | 20 |
Document/FileProduction | 45 |
Discussion: By identifyingthe time spent in support activities and utilizing treatment time standardsas outlined in the AARC URM, we developed a productivity management tool forPFT. The system has provided for an assessment of service demand and a new toolto better assess staffing requirements for new programs, to justify staff, andto flex and cross utilize staff with changes in work demand.