As we mentioned in our last post, one key to getting a patient to show up for his or her new patient appointment is to limit the time between the call for the appointment and the actual appointment date. After 7 days, potential patients begin to get antsy and look elsewhere for a provider of services.
Sure, in a perfect world, it would be nice to tell every potential new patient, “Hey come on in today. We’ll see you whenever you get here.” And if you happen to have a nonpatient hole in your schedule, you should certainly try to get that space filled with an interested consult. Of course, the world is not perfect and the reality is that you have days that are full of patients eager to see you. Simply fitting in an appointment as vital and time consuming as a consult just isn’t always doable.
So what to do. Here are some potential methods to ease that backlog:
Schedule some Saturday time
In quite a number of practices, Saturdays have proven to be extremely popular for new patients. Show up rates on Saturday tend to be among the highest of the week. This makes intuitive sense. Saturdays typically do not have the potential distractions and interruptions that might cause a patient to miss his or her appointment. No unexpected phone calls from clients to cause cancellations and usually there are no traffic snarls on Saturday to keep patients away. And if a consultation runs long, the patient doesn’t have to stress out about missing another meeting or getting the kids to ballet practice on time.
On the practice side, no one wants to give up every Saturday to work and I’m not suggesting that you do this. But consider one morning a month to offer some convenience and another block of time to make available. If you are a practice worried about overtime, this shouldn’t push you over the edge. And if it does, signing a couple of contracts will more than make up for it.
Open up some evenings
As we’ve discussed a number of times on this site, convenience is of utmost importance when attracting new patients and few things are more convenient than allowing your patients to finish up the school day and the work day before spending time at your office for a consult. And yes, at the end of the work day, a number of people are simply exhausted and want to relax a bit. But for others, this may be their only chance to get away for that appointment. If no one else offers this opportunity, but you do, guess where patients are going to go?
Again, you need to consider the situation in your own office. I wouldn’t suggest an 8 am – 8 pm workday. By the time those 7 pm patients rolled in, you and your staff would either be worn out or wired on 15 cups of coffee. But consider starting later in the day and running an 11 am – 8 pm day or consider the following:
Run a strictly late day
Here, you would open up only after school is done and only for consults (you could slide in some regular patients if the consult slots don’t fill). Perhaps a 3 pm – 9 pm day or even a 4 pm – 8 pm day. Make it like a happy hour (without alcohol of course) to pump up the energy in the place after what is a long hard day for all of your patients.
Consider scheduling one of these days a month, or if you find that patients are being made to wait weeks for an appointment, add more during the week. The staff can sleep in or get whatever needs to get done during the day and then knock out a positive, high energy session in the evening.
Providing this level of convenience for patients doesn’t always provide the most convenience for you, especially if you have family to nurture and support. However, making a bit of additional time for new patients during the month can separate you from the pack of competitors in your market. Not only do you get a chance to see new patients more quickly, but you get to show off the fact that you are willing to take an extra step for the happiness of your patients and the quality of their overall experience. And that has great intangible value.
No comments:
Post a Comment