Why is Scheduling Important?

One of the first things you do at work once you've clocked in and gotten settled for the day is probably pulling up the patient schedule for the day! It's like your road map by which you begin to plan your trip through the next eight hours! How often do you think a team member in your office looks at the patient schedule during one full day of work? If you are like most optometric practices, I bet everyone looks at it, talks about it, or makes changes to the patient schedule over 100x per day each! Clearly the schedule is a critically important part of the business. Why is it so important? 

Well, just as you are using it to plan your day, so is everyone else on the team. Each of you needs to know who is coming in, why they are coming in, how to contact them if needed, when they will be there, and what you and your team members need to do to prepare for that one patient’s visit. Not only that, but you need to also think about how to manage that patient in the midst of the other activities going on while they are there. You need to understand their clinical, retail and financial history (including insurance information, if applicable) to do your job well.  During this training series we’ll talk a lot about how specifically to schedule patients so that you can do your job the absolutely most effective and efficient way possible. You are going to craft your schedule like a work of art, understanding that each person on your team will be looking at it from their own perspective. You need to create an accurate picture of each patient, as well as the way their visit will fall within the day with all the other patients who are there at the same time.