Small Practice, Big Problems
As you may or may not know, our office is quite small. It is a homey place with tight quarters which presents unique challenges; challenges other offices may not ever have to experience. Our unique challenges come unique systems and solutions, I believe most of these can be translated to be useful in larger clinics as well.
Due to limited space, limited exams are difficult to work into our day. Especially, if we are trying to utilize our chair time to be as productive as possible. They can be unpredictable and difficult to work in same day treatment if that is your goal. If same day treatment is not performed, patients leave frustrated and annoyed that they have to return to fix the issues. The team gets annoyed because they are not sure what to set up for. The front is annoyed because they do not know where to work them into the day. The doctors are annoyed because they want to help but do not have time because they are double booked. Etcetera, etcetera.
Handheld Solution
To help make our limited exams more predictable, we ask the patients to send a picture of the problem if its visible: many of our limited exams are broken or chipped teeth. This can very frequently be captured with a simple phone picture and text or emailed to the office. Our patient base is average age of 55+ and our patients are seeing the benefit of giving it a shot and sending the picture. Verbiage over the phone is also important! Aside from the simple triage questions, the picture will help us place the patient in the correct block out for the day to make sure we can do our best to be efficient with their time and ours!
P.S. If you want more tips like this, you can catch me in the Practice Management Like a Pro group inside of DSN’s Workplace.
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