6 scheduling tips from practice management experts

By Lauren Burns, Associate Editor
March 18, 2013

A hygiene department that is “holding its own” threatens a practice in two ways:

• Marginal patient care
• Marginal production

Unless you’re losing patients as fast as you’re gaining them, each year you should be adding hygiene appointments to your schedule. It could be that:

• the doctor is not adequately promoting hygiene in the new patient appointment
• the practice is not following up on patients who fall through the cracks, or
• you’re plugging holes in hygiene with new patients, creating the illusion that holding your own is a good thing.

Identify and resolve your problem – for your patients and for your practice!
-Steve Cartin, Cartin Coaching, Cartin Coaching on Facebook

You can kill even the best schedule with these 10 culprits:

1. Starting late at the beginning of the day or after lunch
2. Not having lab work present
3. Operatory not set up when patient enters
4. Unexpected procedures or changing procedures
5. Lack of a consistent “late patient” protocol
6. Non-patient interruptions: phone calls, sales people, etc.
7. Lack of expanded duties training and use
8. No morning huddle to check for glitches in the schedule
9. Doctor unable to move from room to room efficiently, getting too focused on one patient
10. Doctor over-communicating and not delegating communication

We have made it simple for our dental patients to cancel without consequences by juggling the schedule in an attempt to keep up with daily changes, making it appear that it is acceptable to change appointments, and allowing our patients to cancel their appointments on our answering machines. A few solutions:

• State the following on your answering machine: “If you would like to reschedule your appointment, please call during business hours so we may personally assist you.”
• Develop a call list so that when an opening appears in the schedule you have an opportunity to fill it easily.
• Don’t state you’ve had a cancellation. Say, “We’ve had a change in our schedule today and I immediately thought of you!”

-Jo-Anne Jones, RDH Connection