In my experience, most practices approach the issue of scheduling new patient consultations in one of two fundamental ways: they either sprinkle them into the schedule along with the other daily activities inherent in running the practice, or they set aside time in the schedule for this specific purpose while doing the same for work in the clinic.
While this is not my area of expertise – there are other consultants who specialize in helping practices with scheduling issues – I used to do extensive training for business clients on the topic of time management, and for for this topic I will offer my opinion on which approach works best in orthodontics and explain why.
When considering the two approaches that your practice can take regarding how to schedule work, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes on the subject, from Michael Altshuler: “the bad news is that time flies; the good news is, you’re the pilot.” Put another way, either you manage your calendar, or your calendar manages you.
This is why I have a strong aversion to treating the lifeblood of your business – starting new cases – as anything other than a priority when it comes to allocating time in the practice. Specifically, I am referring to “squeezing in” these consultations between other activities in the practice.
Consider for a moment the problems inherent in trying to fit your new-patient consultations around multiple, unrelated work activities, all of which I have observed, first-hand:
- The first impression made on visitors who are made to wait, and wait, to see the doctor, who is tied up in the clinic with some unforeseen patient issue;
- The sense of a lack of control for your team inherent in trying to juggle clinical work with seeing visitors;
- The stress created for the doctor and staff when workflow inevitably gets behind;
- The negative impact on the attention span of the doctor, created by a preoccupation with getting back to the clinic to get “caught up”;
- The negative impact of having inadequate time on the quality of the consultation
There are others, and all of them have one inherent, underlying cause: surrendering control over how time is spent by trying to juggle independent, unrelated tasks simultaneously.
And it doesn’t have to be that way.
The solution is no different for you than it is for any multi-tasking, service-driven business: determine what you want to do and when you want to be doing it, plan time for it in advance, and then control your time usage by steering activities into the appropriate designated time slot for each task. For a simple example, you might determine that you need eight hours a week for new patient consultations, and therefore make Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons your designated new-patient consult times. Thus, the doctor is not in the clinic during those hours.
What are the benefits? Here are a few:
- Virtually no waiting for the visiting families
- A properly relaxed doctor and staff
- A better quality presentation, due partly to repetition
- A better consultation meeting, due partly to repetition
- A better visitor experience
- A higher conversion rate
I realize that most of you do not do this, and you may initially feel that it will not work in your practice. I understand your reasons for feeling that way, but I encourage you to experiment with the concept. There is no getting around the fact that, in terms of quality, your new visitor experience needs to be every bit as good as your patient experience. You cannot afford to treat these meetings as an interruption to clinic work. After all, visiting families who are inconvenienced with long wait times culminating in a brief meeting with a harried doctor needing to get back to the paying customers are not likely to feel valued in a way that results in a decision to move forward.