Set a vacation policy – A doctor’s office is like every other business; you can’t operate effectively if everyone on staff is out at once. Set a time off request policy that only allows a certain number of providers and staff to take off at any given time, and requires them to let you know a certain number of days – or, preferably, weeks – in advance. If you do end up short-staffed, remember that the people remaining will have more responsibilities, so allow extra time in the schedule for this.

Plan for rushes – Certain parts of the year always seem to give rise to specific kinds of visits – January brings acute visits, sports physicals come in August, and April is home to camp physicals. Knowing seasonal scheduling trends will help you minimize last minute adjustments by adjusting your schedule template for this. Use marketing to remind your patients to schedule in advance, and consider asking part-time providers for extra hours during this time so that you can add clinical hours to ensure sure you can meet demand.

Track errors –If you don’t have a no-show policy, create one and follow it. Make sure you educate your patients on this policy, and that it follows any state regulations to avoid patient abandonment claims.

Observe and report – Do you know the average office wait time for each provider?  Measure every step of a patient’s visit – when they arrive, length of time to check in, length of time in the waiting room, how long the nurse is in the exam room, when the doctor enters and exits the exam room, and when the patient actually leave the office.   Learning this will let you see where bottlenecks are happening and work to remove them.

Educate patients – Often, patients tell the front office their issue is something minor even when it’s not. This can negatively affect scheduling by turning what the staff thought was a 15-minute appointment into one that takes 30 minutes or longer. Patients need to understand that describing their issue helps us ensure the physician is prepared to deal with the problem (equipment or supplies) prior to the patient’s arrival.

Once you have everything running smoothly, you may discover an added benefit – extra time which you can utilize by adding one additional visit per day, which can boost your annual revenue by up to $18,000!