ABSTRACT
Point of care space is the specific location in a clinic where value added care is provided to a patient by a caregiver. Examples of point of care space in clinics are the exam rooms, procedure rooms, phlebotomy or blood draw stations, the scale to collect height and weight if it is outside the exam room, a private telehealth or teleconference computer station, and other diagnostic space. After knowing what types of point of care space exist, find out how many of each type of space exist. The number of point of care locations will indicate the number of providers and caregivers that can operate in the same clinic at the same time. Provider hours are another one of the key capacity limiters for a clinic. Learning the hours for a clinic will help identify a planned operational capacity for that clinic which further can be compared to the clinic’s actual performance against that planned capacity.
