Scheduling effectively seems to be a daily conundrum in my practice.
Everyone wants to be busy and to have a continuous stream of patients but having too many patients in a given amount of time can be exhausting not to mention squeezing in the unavoidable walk-ins that we all deal with. So what’s a good balance?
First of all, the key to effective scheduling is knowing how many patients you need to see in a day to remain profitable. A revenue goal helps determine a productivity goal. A month that is made up of evenly productive days will be less stressful than a month that is full of high days and low days. This “roller coaster” type of scheduling can be very stressful.
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So let’s say to reach your productivity goals, you need to schedule two potential revenue generating appointments per day. For instance, an effective way to ensure reaching this goal of two sales opportunities per day could be to block two one hour appts that are saved for one new patient and one re-evaluation of a current patient. This type of schedule is designed to produce 12 equally productive months a year and to minimize inconsistent revenue streams.
Service is an important aspect of every hearing healthcare practice, so I could suggest blocking one hour in the am and one hour in the pm when patients are encouraged to walk in for service. Don’t want to be crazy? Simply tell your patients that walk-ins will not be accepted EXCEPT during those blocks of time (and then Stick to It!)
The use of an Assistant is a great way to increase productivity and profitability. The concept has been endorsed by every professional organization for the past forty years and yet it has been estimated that only 25% of practices utilize assistants. Delegating non-revenue generating tasks to a support person can be a very effective way to create more time for revenue generation and for assisting patients that need diagnostics or hearing aid adjustments. Check your state licensure law to determine tasks that are legally possible to delegate to an assistant.
Time is money so try to minimize no-shows and cancellations. Make sure patients know their appointment time has been specially reserved for them. Patients need to understand it is impossible to fill that time if they do not show up. Many practices call patients 24-48 hours before their appointment to remind them. Some electronic office management systems are capable of sending electronic confirmations. Confirmation calls can be called “courtesy reminder calls,” and patients should be asked if they require such a call.
In a focus group conducted by HIA a few years ago, patients indicated that they preferred regularly scheduled visits with their hearing healthcare providers but how frequent should those appts be? Probably every six months is adequate to stay connected with your patients and you want to stay connected because keeping a patient for a lifetime is good for business. And appts to clean and check hearing aids or to repair devices can be legally handled by support personnel in most states.
Make every effort to limit non-patient interruptions during a day. When a salesperson calls and wants to book time with you, ask them to send you key points of their call in an email and tell them you will contact them if interested. Time is money and people won’t hesitate to waste your time.
I would suggest scheduling twenty to thirty minutes of flex time for phone calls and paperwork around lunch and at the end of a day. These slots can also be used to handle “emergencies” that arise.
The key to scheduling for profitability is for professionals to concentrate on revenue-generating appts and for support personnel to handle the service appointments.
Life is crazy so try to limit chaos by creating a very intentional schedule.
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