By Jerry Hayes, OD
Equipping your practice to see one more last-minute patient per day may be more profitable than being all booked up. The keys to making this work: delegation, instrumentation and increased capacity.
“I’m All Booked Up” Overrated
Many doctors feel a sense of security when they see that they are booked up for the next few weeks. But those appointments on the books are just promises of patients in your exam chair. Assuming you are looking to grow revenues, I feel it is more important to be available to your patients within a few days when they call for an appointment.
One More Patient Per Day vs. Booked for Three Weeks
Let’s say your annual revenues are $600,000. You are seeing eight patients per day at $312 per exam, totaling $12,500 per week, and you work 48 weeks out of the year. Now, let’s see what happens when you increase the number of patients per day by just one. If you see nine patients per day, and you charge $312, that comes to $14,000 per week. Continuing to work 48 weeks a year, that additional patient per day boosts your annual revenues to $674,000. You have found an additional $74,000 just by making room for one more exam per day.
From that math, you can see that you’re better off being booked just a few days in advance and seeing 9 patients per day than being booked three or four weeks in advance and seeing eight per day.
Bad PR of “All Booked Up”
You may think it looks good–that patients will be impressed at how in-demand you are–when they call up for an appointment and find that they have to wait nearly a month to see you. But that’s often not the reaction your patients will have. When I was in practice, there were patients who told me they wanted an appointment for an exam right away, and when they heard I wasn’t available the next day, they booked with another OD. Your patients won’t always wait for you. The level of availability you offer also speaks to the patient experience you provide. How satisfied with your practice will a patient be who has to wait a month for an appointment?
–ROB Editors
Delegate to Add One More Per Day
Increasing the number of patients you see by at least one per day isn’t as hard as you may think–no matter how busy you are. Sometimes, you can do it by simply delegating more. For instance, your staff should be doing all pretesting if they aren’t already, and staff also can be used for tasks like training patients in contact lenses insertion and regimens. As doctor, it is most important for you to spend quality time with patients. Tasks such as coding and billing and payroll should be delegated to staff whenever possible.
New Equipment, More Patients Per Day
After delegating as much as you can to staff, think about purchasing or upgrading equipment that can automate more of the exam. How are you doing on pretesting equipment, for instance? Does the equipment you currently use offer as much automation as possible? Sometimes the equipment you have is simply too dated to offer optimum efficiency, so an upgrade is needed. Also assess whether you have enough of the machines, so that at least two patients can be pretested at the same time.
Create at Least Two Exam Lanes
Those extra rooms don’t necessarily require costly renovations. You can often create an additional exam lane by thinking about which of your office’s other rooms is not essential, and then converting those spaces into exam lanes.
By adding at least one more patient to your daily schedule you can improve the patient experience with enhanced doctor availability, and significantly increase annual revenues–a win-win for both doctor and patient.
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Jerry Hayes, OD, isthe founder of Hayes Marketing, HMI Buying Group and the e-dr. Network. He also is the former owner and senior partner in a successful three-man practice in Vicksburg, Miss. To contact him: jhayesod@gmail.com.
