Scheduling

Welcome to course four, where we are going to be discussing the patient production cycle as it relates to the patient as well as it relates to those rules that you and your team members are tasked to do from start to finish. As I mentioned in an earlier course, it's important that you have a strong understanding of each role within the practice. This means the timing and what the patient experience expectation is, so that you can ensure a phenomenal patient experience, have great team communication, and be able to make those adjustments as needed. 

Alright, let's begin reviewing that patient production cycle and it all starts with scheduling. scheduling is typically the first touch point or the first time we have, or our patient has an experience with us and I'm going to be going over some important key points that I want to highlight for you, that will help you be successful. However, it is very important that you have or that you go through our Schedule Management program as well as our Unveiling the Mystery, which touches base on the insurances. Alright, very very important so you’ll understand the terminology that I'm going to be highlighting here for you, to help you be successful. 

So, first of all, when scheduling, it's important that you capture all patient demographic information. Now, you may be looking at your patient software demographics screen, which i want you to do. You might be going, how much of that information do I need to gather? Well the answer is all of it. It's very very important for us. So, I do want to give you a task. If you haven't done so, review your patient demographics screen and write down any questions that you have and be sure to bring those questions to the live group training session, so that your coach can answer those questions for you. Ask your practice administrator and/or your doctor and be sure that you’ve gone through your practice software tutorials, that can often be very helpful as well. So, make sure we capture all demographic information.

Next, we have capturing both medical and vision insurance when scheduling that appointment. Very very important, whether they’re coming in for a vision exam or medical, we always capture both. Again, we go over this in our Unveiling the Mystery. Now, one tip on this, I always like to recommend that if you can, pull their vision insurance at the time of scheduling. This allows us to make sure that we don't have any unnecessary blocking of our schedules or appointment time spots, because we waited to verify the insurance benefits until the patient got there and found out that they didn't have them and not always, but typically, they won't want to keep their appointment if they don't have benefits. So, if you can do that while you're scheduling that allows you to control your schedule as well as it allows you the opportunity to see if there's any other family members that might benefit from a vision exam. Be very helpful for the patient and is also a great way to help fill your schedule.

Okay, so let's talk about confirming those appointments. Now one tip, while you're still on the phone with the patient and as you're wrapping up, communicate and let them know, set that expectation, that they will be receiving a confirmation call and ask them to call back to confirm. This really helps to cut down on your no shows. You’d be surprised.

And finally the biggest tip I can give you is, it is a crime to not confirm your appointments. And you've heard us talk about it, if you have an electronic communication system, that doesn't remove the human call. You’ll always want to monitor that and if they haven't confirmed, you want to pick up that phone and call them.