Keep it simple when scheduling appointments
Too many variations can worsen your backlog
The existence of multiple appointment types and corresponding appointment times has impeded access to care, says Mark Murray, MD, MPA, a consultant with Murray, Tantau and Associates in Sacramento, CA.
"As physicians, we have created categories of appointment types in a vain attempt to control demand. What we ultimately do is increase waiting time. We create a lot of variation and increase waiting time in a vain attempt to control demand," he says.
"Wave scheduling" may be the solution to some office backlogs, says Doug Hough, PhD, a partner at Arista Associates in Fairfax, VA. If a physician typically sees five patients in an hour, the classic way to schedule is to set one appointment on the hour, the next at 10 minutes after the hour, and so on.
Instead, Hough has found it effective in some practices to schedule patients in waves. This means scheduling three patients on the hour and two on the half-hour. "Many times, patients won’t show up on time. This way, the first one that gets there gets in immediately," Hough says.
He adds that wave scheduling often helps physicians use their time more efficiently so they are behind less often. One potential drawback is that if all patients show up at the same time, one of them has to sit in the waiting room for 20 minutes.
However, that’s not likely to become a problem, Hough adds, "because most of the time patients don’t show up exactly on time."
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