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Simple ways to stay on time throughout your day.
By Alan P. Levitt, OD
Feb. 21, 2024
Running on time was always a purposeful goal in my practice. It showed that our office (doctor and staff alike) respected and valued our patients’ time and wanted to efficiently address their needs. It also reflected my personality; by nature I am a punctual person, so I equally hate making others wait and having others make me wait.
By policy, we never double-booked comprehensive examinations; if the schedule was fully booked, we would only double book emergencies and work them in as soon as possible.
Running on time reduces stress for everyone in the office and allows both doctor and staff to experience greater work satisfaction and increased production. I knew things were running well when I came out of the exam room to see smiling faces and hear laughter.
Compare this to the typical medical office atmosphere – where a waiting room full of anxious, annoyed people is ignored by inattentive, dispassionate staff, who are hiding behind barriers, focused primarily on their cell phones.
If you frequently run 15 or more minutes late something is structurally wrong with your scheduling and should be promptly addressed.
It’s easy to just keep doing things the way you always did, even when your way of doing those things is inefficient or no longer makes sense. Scheduling is one critical area that deserves frequent review and tweaking.
Start with a Targeted Staff Meeting
First, list what you, your patients and your staff say they hate about going to any doctor’s office. Then ask your staff to tell you where they see consistent bottlenecks in your practice schedule, and share any specific complaints from patients about your office schedule or procedures.
As a team, analyze the office schedule and procedures to allocate specific, realistic blocks of time for each type of visit or testing. Compile these new scheduling guidelines, institute the changes, reevaluate frequently and modify as needed. Your staff will likely appreciate revised office procedures that incorporate their input and provide a useful and consistent structure.
Maintain a Written Scheduling Guide – Be Consistent
Your office schedule only works if everyone is consistent and knows what to do. We maintained a written scheduling guide to help staff efficiently appoint patients, avoid predictable delays, and revised it often as we added new technology and services or noted new bottlenecks. It also allowed new hires to quickly master our scheduling system.
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Our appointment system had three columns for each day divided into 10-minute blocks; the left column was for the technician, the middle one was for the doctor and the right one was for special testing such as visual fields, OCT, or photos or contact lens insertion/removal training. We allotted 20 minutes for our technicians to pre-screen a comprehensive examination and 10 minutes for a follow-up visit.
The technician and special-testing schedules were staggered to efficiently feed into the doctor’s schedule. Once pre-screening was completed, the doctor entered the room to review history and findings and began the evaluation.
For the doctor, we scheduled 20 minutes for a new or established comprehensive examination, 30 minutes for an established comprehensive examination with an annual contact-lens evaluation, 40 minutes for a new comprehensive examination with contact-lens fitting, 50 minutes for a new exam with a scleral fitting and 10 minutes for a medical or contact-lens follow-up. We also allotted one 10-minute doctor block every morning and afternoon for catch up, emergencies or late arrivals. To avoid running over into lunch or closing, we saved the final 20 minutes of the doctor’s morning and afternoon sessions for follow-up visits and completing any dilated examinations.
If you run on time, patients will learn to show up on time. If they know you always run late, then they will run late or be more likely to no-show.
Show Patients You Care About them Individually & Are Not Just Rushing to Get to the Next Patient
Every office has patients who consistently require extra time – be it from personality, complexity of their condition, handicaps or age. Our records were flagged to indicate which patients needed an extra 10 minutes of tech and/or doctor time to help staff maintain the schedule and avoid predictable delays.
Patients sense when staff and physicians are rushing and lack the time to answer their questions; this diminishes both the quality of their experience and confidence in their care. They may start to believe you value volume and money more than their well-being, and may be less likely to return or refer other patients.
It always felt great when patients shared how well run our practice was compared with all their other doctors. Share these compliments with your staff to continually motivate them and reinforce their efforts.
Thoughtful scheduling generally provided a few extra minutes to interact with patients and explain all appropriate options and recommendations; all told this allowed us to generate significantly higher patient retention and per patient revenue than our peers.
In closing, an efficient office schedule is a key component to maintaining a productive and low-stress environment for patients, staff and doctors alike.
<<Click HERE to see an example on a spreadsheet of how Dr. Levitt managed his schedule>>
Alan P. Levitt, OD, now retired, was a practice owner in Miami, Fla, for over three decades before selling his practice in 2021. To contact him: idocalmiaf@aol.com
