A modern primary care physician, needing to see as many as thirty to thirtyfive patients per day to cover an onerous fixed overhead of a quarter of a million dollars per year, can-not achieve the elasticity of scheduling necessary to provide immediate, comprehensive, and compassionate care and service.
There is no optimal method that maintains a steady stream, guarantees customer satisfaction, and keeps things fair. A classic approach to effective patient scheduling is “the wave.” Three or four patients arrive synchronously, each entering a maze of medical exam rooms, the laboratory, and the front-end business area.
Medical appointment scheduling is both art and science. It is a form of fluid dynamics, regulating the flow of individuals, each moving at a different rate and presenting different needs.
scheduling matrix
identifies a pattern of working and nonworking hours for the medical office.
Stream scheduling
each patient is given a predetermined appointment time based on status and needs.
Wave scheduling
assigns a group of patient appointments to the top of each hour. Assumes that not everyone will be on time.
Modified wave scheduling
schedules patients at regular intervals within a given hour, example every 15 minutes.
Cluster scheduling
groups similar procedures at the same time or day of the week, example all physicals will be thursday afternoons.
Double-booking
scheduling two patients in the same time slot for the same provider.
Open office hours/
all patients are walk-ins and are seen in the order in which they arrive.
“I have good news, Mr. Smith! The X-ray of your foot is absolutely normal. You may return to work first thing tomorrow morning,” she advises in an animated upbeat voice. Flustered by a favorable report, Mr. Smith snaps back, “There must be some mistake. I can’t possibly go back to work so soon. Put the doctor on the phone!” Nothing is easy.
Persevering, though, saves lives. It is a value-added service and an absolutely critical component of good primary care.
As primary care physicians’ patient panels continue to swell, spreading our services and our selves ever thinner, the dilemmas of time management will become ever more difficult.
Those who maintain that better information technology will wring greater efficiency from the primary care provider disregard that basic physical principle of time and matter.
Rigidly structuring phone time is as ludicrous as penciling in
quality time” with young children. It doesn’t work that way.
The heavy volume of physician phone calls is a symptom of a swamped system of primary care.
There is no optimal method that maintains a steady stream, guarantees customer satisfaction, and keeps things fair. A classic approach to effective patient scheduling is “the wave.” Three or four patients arrive synchronously, each entering a maze of medical exam rooms, the laboratory, and the front-end business area.
Medical appointment scheduling is both art and science. It is a form of fluid dynamics, regulating the flow of individuals, each moving at a different rate and presenting different needs.
scheduling matrix
identifies a pattern of working and nonworking hours for the medical office.
Stream scheduling
each patient is given a predetermined appointment time based on status and needs.
Wave scheduling
assigns a group of patient appointments to the top of each hour. Assumes that not everyone will be on time.
Modified wave scheduling
schedules patients at regular intervals within a given hour, example every 15 minutes.
Cluster scheduling
groups similar procedures at the same time or day of the week, example all physicals will be thursday afternoons.
Double-booking
scheduling two patients in the same time slot for the same provider.
Open office hours/
all patients are walk-ins and are seen in the order in which they arrive.
“I have good news, Mr. Smith! The X-ray of your foot is absolutely normal. You may return to work first thing tomorrow morning,” she advises in an animated upbeat voice. Flustered by a favorable report, Mr. Smith snaps back, “There must be some mistake. I can’t possibly go back to work so soon. Put the doctor on the phone!” Nothing is easy.
Persevering, though, saves lives. It is a value-added service and an absolutely critical component of good primary care.
As primary care physicians’ patient panels continue to swell, spreading our services and our selves ever thinner, the dilemmas of time management will become ever more difficult.
Those who maintain that better information technology will wring greater efficiency from the primary care provider disregard that basic physical principle of time and matter.
Rigidly structuring phone time is as ludicrous as penciling in
quality time” with young children. It doesn’t work that way.
The heavy volume of physician phone calls is a symptom of a swamped system of primary care.
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