Hospital.Help

Munich Maintain your own curiosity, take the entire practice team with you and invest sufficiently in sensible digital solutions: Ahmad Sirfy, a specialist in general medicine, represented this basic attitude towards digitalization the day before yesterday in Munich.

When taking over the practice in 2018, it was clear to him from the start that as many processes as possible would be mapped digitally, emphasized Sirfy during the Praxissalon event series German medical journal. He is pursuing the concept of a hybrid practice.

The problems outlined in the region around the Nymphenburg medical center in Munich are similar to those in other parts of Germany: many patients, a high burden on practices and difficulties with successors. According to Sirfy, several family doctor’s practices in the area have closed in recent years. As a result, the number of patients has increased again.

Because of the noticeably growing burden alone, extensive digitalization is a given for him. This is the only way he can put the necessary focus on efficiency and work density while at the same time putting as little strain on the entire team as possible.

The practice team, consisting of seven doctors and four medical assistants (MFA), is involved in the constant development of the processes and structures and is an important success factor for Sirfy. For example, there is a weekly meeting to exchange ideas and joint workshops several times a year.

In addition to this investment in personnel, it is also important to keep your own curiosity as a driving force. You have to be willing to try something out and, if necessary, reject ideas.

In this way, doctors could get even more involved and help IT providers find good digital solutions for healthcare issues. In general, in his opinion, practices are not investing enough in digitalization. Three to four percent of the respective profit is not much compared to other industries, said Sirfy.

His practice uses, among other things, a self-check-in with the electronic health card (eGK) and a patient guidance system via screen to the respective treatment and diagnostic rooms. This relieves the MFA considerably, says Sirfy. The fact that telephony is completely outsourced to those working from home, who in turn can process calls asynchronously using AI assistance, also contributes to the relief.

In addition, around a quarter of patients already use the practice app to access documents or make appointments. The concept of an almost appointment-only practice makes it possible to limit waiting times to a maximum of ten minutes.

Sirfy emphasized that the modern and individually adapted practice management system (PVS) plays a central role in the internal work processes. In addition to largely automated billing, a dashboard with all incoming documents and a task planner supports the practice team. This is coupled with a working time overview and enables care processes to be assigned to the main practitioner of the respective patient or the MFA. © aha/aerzteblatt.de