If you desire greater efficiency in your practice, a great place to start is evaluating patient flow for any bottlenecks. Look for slow check-ins, long exam room transitions, or delays in the optical. I recommend a team approach to this task because 1) your staff likely has awareness of issues you do not, and 2) involving them in the process encourages their “buy-in” with any changes that will be made.

Schedule a meeting with your entire team and ask them to bring their observations and solutions. Reassure them that the goal is to improve the patient experience while reducing workload and stress on them.

However, don’t attempt to tackle too many issues at once. A good goal for this meeting is to come away with a list of problems and solutions. Start by focusing only on the most important issues that will have the greatest impact on patient flow. Some examples of first problems to tackle could be minimizing paperwork with preappointment forms, utilizing a scribe, or outsourcing billing.

Set a goal that defines success, such as reducing the average patient wait time or tracking the impact on optical sales. Understand this is a process, not a one-time change.

Tune in next week for more efficiency pearls.

Steve Vargo, OD serves as Optometric Practice Management Consultant for IDOC. A published author and speaker with more than 15 years’ clinical experience, he is now a full-time consultant advising ODs in all areas of practice management and optometric office operations. For questions or comments about this article, please contact svargo@idoc.net. For more services, visit idoc.net.