As a clinician, you’re likely preoccupied with three primary goals known as the Triple Aim: improving the health of populations, enhancing the patient care experience, and reducing the cost of health care. These goals take precedence over all other concerns. And they’re all patient-centered.
But what about you? Love of self often gets a bad wrap, and might even be considered a taboo topic for caregivers to dwell on. But self-love does not have to be a negative thing. In the case of doctors, it might even be a necessary concern. Here’s why:
For many clinicians, focusing exclusively on these three aims causes stress that can impact work-life balance and sap the joy from practicing medicine. Though it’s rewarding to meet the lofty benchmarks of the Triple Aim, if you aren’t happy while doing so, you could experience dissatisfaction with your job. This is one of the primary causes of physician burnout.
Meet the Quadruple Aim, a concept gaining traction in the healthcare community because it introduces the concerns of physicians. This fourth addition to the triple aim is physician satisfaction. It addresses the disparity between how patients and clinicians are valued and treated in the healthcare system. In the Quadruple Aim, the four goals coexist in a symbiotic relationship in which they all balance and check one another.
By adding physician satisfaction to the priority list, the Quadruple Aim improves the work-life balance of doctors so they can feel and perform better. In the long run, the quadruple aim will advance population health by ensuring that physicians are well enough themselves to execute value-based-care.
Here are three ways you can incorporate the fourth aim into your practice:
- Incorporate your staff in care coordination: A key feature of successful population health is making sure that all patients’ needs and preferences are known ahead of time and communicated at the right time to the right people, and that this information is used to provide safe, appropriate, and effective care to the patients. Ensure that your staff is well-trained and understand so they are also working to contribute to the health of your patients.
- Invest in a kiosk: Make the most of your patients’ time by allowing them to self-register via a kiosk in the patient’s waiting room. How does this achieve the fourth aim? You’ll be able to see more patients and add to your bottom line. Allowing patients to check themselves in also ensures accurate data collection, frees your staff to work on other tasks, and helps to tighten your revenue cycle. Keep an eye out for a blog post in the near future about how to optimize your office staff for revenue cycle success.
- Implement technology workflows: It’s impossible to succeed in the Triple Aim without adequate technology workflows that incorporate both robust data analysis and patient engagement. Consider investing in not only a good EMR, but additional technology that gives you a holistic view of your patient populations as well as actionable analytics so that you can improve on areas that are lacking.
Need help implementing the fourth aim? Privia may be able to help you. Contact us at physicians@priviahealth.com or call (888) 765-7610.
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