The Patient Distribution Process: Manual or Automated in 2024?

Are your providers often complaining about burnout or uneven workloads? Could there be a tool out there to help you cut time in creating a daily rounding list, decrease provider dissatisfaction and burnout? In 2023, with emerging technology and automation taking over, there are many facets to the process of patient distribution, commonly known as the patient assignment process.  

How do you make your rounding list? There are so many factors that we’d like to consider when going through the daily patient distribution process: factors such as geography, continuity of care, and hospitalist workloads. But when you’re putting it all together manually, often times these factors go unaccounted for, and the priority becomes just giving each hospitalist the same number of patients and getting that list out as quickly as possible.  

Is your patient assignment process just too much manual work?  

Patient Distribution: Making the list  

As mentioned, there are endless ways hospitalists make their daily rounding lists. The most common way is called provider-based. In this situation, patient distributions are dependent on which attendings are scheduled for the day. Then, the hospitalist assigns these providers to teams. The benefits of this include: 

• Organization  
• Improves sign-off process 
• Helps the list maker have rules to go by 

The second method, called team-based assignments, is becoming more common. In this situation, a patient is distributed to a care team. The patient never changes teams, but the providers in the team can change based on their work schedules. This makes it easier for internal communications about updates and changes.  

Unexpected costs of your patient distribution process  

 Have you ever wondered what the actual cost of doing your patient assignment process manually versus having it automated? We’ve talked about physician burnout and the risks of uneven workloads, but there are other factors such as:  

• Missing revenue opportunities – When you have an automated patient distribution process, you can see all the charges associated with the patients on your list for that given day. If your process is manual, you won’t always be able to double-check if there’s a charge associated for each daily rounding visit. 
• Patient safety concerns – Missing or not rounding on a patient can be fatal.   
• Unfair rounding lists – When one provider feels they have a significantly heavier workload than their colleagues, it contributes to burnout quickly.  
• Continuity of care – If the list is automated, your organization can enjoy decreased LOS.  

How Medaptus can help your patient distribution process 

Medaptus’ Assign solution can integrate with your existing EHR and handle the most complex patient distribution processes each morning in just 30 minutes. Assign can also help with improving length of stay and the incurrence of costs associated with those days. Features that allow you to assign the same patients to the same providers on a daily basis to improve continuity of care and patient safety are available within the solution as well. 

 The result? Even workloads and improved provider satisfaction.