In this final installment of the “mini-refresh” series, I explore ways to improve and streamline workflows in the office. I love efficiency, and it bothers me when my staff or I are inefficient with our time and energy. Here are a few key areas in which we have streamlined our processes in my practice:

Front desk. The front desk serves as the frontline of your practice, whether that’s in person or through initial contact. It sets the tone for the overall patient experience. Empower your front desk with technology and tools to free up their time so they can concentrate on patient-facing tasks. I highly recommend digital intake forms, online appointment scheduling and a schedule template to organize each day. We use our virtual assistants (VAs) to pre-appoint our patients and confirm visits (more on this later) so my patient care coordinators can answer higher-level, complex questions from patients.

Technician. It’s important to recognize which vital tasks your technician needs to perform every day. We evaluated literally each step of our pretesting process about a year ago and asked ourselves, “Why are we doing this task?” and “Is this task absolutely necessary?” By analyzing every task, we cut out about five minutes of pretesting time, which now allows us to see one or two more patients per day. That adds up!

Also, invest in training for your techs to keep their knowledge of ocular health and disease updated. Having the capability to see what testing may need to be done depending on patient complaints or health history is valuable because we ensure doctor time is utilized most efficiently (i.e., spending less time on ordering tests and more time interpreting them).

Insurance billing and collecting payments. Efficient insurance billing is essential to not only avoid denials and delays on payments, but also to ease the burden on staff or billing services. I have many checkpoints for my staff and myself in this area. For one, we verify insurance and do our best to determine benefits before exams so we get fewer surprises. We no longer accept VCPs (Vision Care Plan), and that helps tremendously.

Additionally, if I notice something “off” or incorrect when I’m assigning my CPT codes, I flag my biller so she can correct them before it becomes a 30-minute nightmare of corrections, phone calls and resubmissions. We also collect all payments at the time of service to avoid having to chase anyone down. If we do need to collect after a visit, we make it easy by texting or emailing online payment links. Employing these strategies has resulted in my 30-day accounts receivables (AR) totaling less than half of my usual months’ collected revenues, and my 30+ day AR is usually only a couple thousand dollars.

Virtual assistants. Since my full article on this last year, I’ve hired another VA and expanded both VAs’ job duties. My VAs save me about an hour every day by scribing my plan notes for patients. As mentioned before, they are key in scheduling duties, verifying insurance and handling many administrative tasks such as referrals and requests for appointments with specialists. We have them run reports for us, compile stats, send faxes, assist with marketing duties and other repetitive tasks with which we find ourselves inundated. Their roles free up our time for patient-facing activities, which is what drives my practice.

Streamlining our day-to-day brings me peace in our office flow, which makes me a better clinician and leader of my practice. I hope you found a couple of gems in this series and gain some improvements in your practice as a result!

Gina M. Wesley OD, MS, FAAO owns and practices at Complete Eye Care in Medina, MN. Accolades include Minnesota's Young Optometrist of the Year in 2011 and the Early Professional Achievement Award from The Ohio State University College of Optometry in 2013. She is a member of the American Optometric Association, a fellow in the American Academy of Optometry and enjoys practicing, writing and lecturing in the industry. For questions or comments about this article, please contact gmowesley@yahoo.com.