Scheduling opinion?

[smelfering]

Our office is looking into revamping our scheduling practices in the new year.

We are a small office, one OD, one prescreener/technician a part time optician and myself (office manager/optician). Currently, we are scheduling routine eye exams and ancillary testing (OCT, VF, etc) interchangeably. We have been playing with the idea of regulating routine exams and ancillary testing to separate days of the week. I have read lots of articles highlighting the pros and cons of each model.

We don't want to alienate our patients who have a tight schedules and busy lives, but we are a growing practice and need to run an efficient office and maximize our time.

What are your thoughts?

Thank you!

[AngeHamm]

Our office is looking into revamping our scheduling practices in the new year.

We are a small office, one OD, one prescreener/technician a part time optician and myself (office manager/optician). Currently, we are scheduling routine eye exams and ancillary testing (OCT, VF, etc) interchangeably. We have been playing with the idea of regulating routine exams and ancillary testing to separate days of the week. I have read lots of articles highlighting the pros and cons of each model.

We don't want to alienate our patients who have a tight schedules and busy lives, but we are a growing practice and need to run an efficient office and maximize our time.

What are your thoughts?

Thank you!

Your mileage may vary, but, in my experience, if you schedule appointments M-F from 9-5 your patients will have a hard time understanding if they don't have that full range of times available for a routine exam. You may want to set aside specific times for VF, CL training, OCT, etc.

[drk]

Andrew is right.

Small practice (I have one) = small volume = small staff = no dedicated technician/instruments/schedule.

You couldn't possibly come up with a "day every two weeks" or "1/2 day every week" or "2 hour windows 2x/wk" to run OCTs and VFs and not **** everyone off. Your compliance would drop off.

What's more, the diagnostic testing is variable...one time you'd have everything full, the next you'd have that day dead. The routine exams would have possibly taken those slots.

If you must have a split schedule like that, I'd put a block on the schedule for an hour every day (like 9:00 am) for special testing. If it isn't filled by two or four weeks in advance I'd take the block off and have it open for routine exams. (That's kind of how we do our CL training schedule.)

[colem84]

Our Dr. uses Friday mornings as his clinic day. 8a-lunch he does no regular eye exams; they only do VF, CL, OCT, etc. Lots of post-op patients, stuff like that. Then he'll use Friday afternoons for eye exams. (When we had 2 Dr's, he took friday afternoons off)

I guess I should also mention that we are not a very small practice, even though we only have one doctor. He sees around 30 patients a day, usually 2 eye exams every half hour. We have 2 pre-exam techs, 1 CL tech, and 3 optical staff (including myself).