Community Physician Practices and Future Role of Practice Manager

Future Role of Practice Manager
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The healthcare landscape constantly evolves, and physician practices are at the forefront of this transformation. As healthcare providers, these practices have a crucial role in engaging with their local communities beyond the walls of their clinical setting. By sponsoring outreach events and initiatives, physician practices can improve patient outcomes and build trust with their patients. Practice managers work behind the scenes in healthcare organizations to guarantee high-quality patient care. They are strategic planners, executors of strategic procedures and policies, and the glue that keeps healthcare operations running seamlessly. This essay will provide examples of five community physician practices that actively engage with their communities. Additionally, it will explore how the role of the practice manager will likely change in the future, highlighting three key examples. Finally, the essay will discuss the future of practice management and the trends and changes shaping this field.
Research and list 5 examples in your community of physician practices (both private and hospital owned) outreach efforts to connect and serve the community beyond the office. Describe what events they sponsor in their communities and the purpose behind them.
Charity events- Charity events may involve things such as runs or walks to raise awareness regarding a disease or preventive measures or raise funds for a particular campaign on health courses such as cancer. Charity events are part of the relief, and financial assistance programs healthcare organizations provide to their patients and the community at large. These charity programs are primarily tailored to address the rising healthcare costs for patients by various approaches, including waiving some fees and offering discounts outright.
Free health screenings- Some conditions, such as cancer, can be cured only when detected early. Hence, free health screenings are meant to detect health issues early enough, such as cervical cancer pap smear tests, and initiate early intervention. In addition, the screening exercise offers an impetus for healthcare organizations to extend and improve healthcare reach via initiatives such as case management, health education, and facilitating the patient to access healthcare services. These programs are central to addressing the burgeoning structural inequalities in the community that undermine the ability of some population groups to access health care services.
The use of mobile clinics- These is the customized motor vehicles that travel around to provide healthcare to the community. This initiative usually aims to increase access to healthcare for individuals with travel barriers or financial problems. The mobile clinic offers different healthcare services and could include healthcare professionals, including community health workers, nurses, physicians, and other medical professionals. This initiative supports mobile healthcare delivery as part of the innovative framework for bringing healthcare services closer to structurally marginalized and vulnerable populations.
School-based community programs – These programs happen when the health practitioners partner with the schools to provide immunizations and education. The school-based community programs could target specific health outcomes, such as augmenting physical activity to reduce cardiovascular illnesses. In this context, the program would help students improve fitness, maintain healthy nutrition, and thus enhance their health outcomes in the long term.
How do you think the role of the practice manager will change in the future? Give at least 3 examples and state the reason for the change.
The impact of technology has been felt in many business areas. 93% of all businesses, including small enterprises, utilize technology in their day-to-day activities (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2022). Indeed, enterprises and governments are rapidly becoming digital as they seek to capture factors such as cost-saving, collaboration, and agility (Michelman, 2018). However, digital is not the destination; it acts as a stepping stone for more profound transformation, including the Internet of things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), and robotics (Michelman, 2018). Practice managers' transformations have not been left behind, as revolution is already taking place, and many more are yet to come. The future of practice management will likely be technology-enabled. For instance, Electronic Health Records (EHR) are increasingly becoming essential to help in easy processing. The abundance of data generated in hospitals is becoming enormous (Dash et al., 2019); hence, each practice management officer must implement EHRs correctly. EHR has also simplified the data analytics process, and this will help in the minimization of errors. Telemedicine is also another critical technological advancement revolutionizing the practice. Covid 19 excavated the use of telehealth (Ye et al., 2020), and today, it is a game changer in the industry, and soon, more advancements will also be seen. Practice managers must understand how to integrate telemedicine services into their practice and ensure that staff is properly trained to use these tools. Telemedicine can improve patient access to care and reduce costs, but it also presents unique data privacy and security challenges (Gajarawala & Pelkowski, 2021). Other technological advancements include patient portals, A.I., and data analytics.
Another change for practice management is that there will be an increased focus on population health. As populations go through their demographics and epidemiological transitions and people increasingly suffer from age-related conditions, there is a very high likelihood of an increased cost without an increased health outcome. This is why more focus should be paid to population health. Additionally, there has been an increase in healthcare costs, and as inflation keeps adjusting to the higher limit, so will healthcare prices. There has been an annual U.S. healthcare expenditure growth of 4.5% since 2013 (Bindman, 2020). As a result, practice managers will have to work closely with other healthcare providers and develop and implement care coordination programs for the community to health in the growing epidemic rates of chronic conditions.
The practice manager will also play a central role in reforming how healthcare professionals are organized to deliver healthcare services. The practice managers will need to learn to structure organizations and organize them around the patient and the...