Winning the waiting room

In our last post, we unearthed the somewhat obvious finding that people do not like to wait.  If it’s waiting for appointment day or waiting in the appropriately-named waiting room, people generally have better things to do than to sit around.  Here, we address the in-office waits that can cause blood pressures to rise and patient schedules to be upended.

We certainly understand that things happen during the patient day.  Shorts suddenly become longs, unanticipated discussions arise and even impromptu bathroom breaks can turn a day packed with patients into a day and night packed with patients.  Even the most efficient, well-oiled machine of a practice will experience hiccups.  

On the other hand, some practices can somehow take a light, 25-appointment day and turn it into a overtime-generating mess.

Here are some tips and techniques to minimize and soften the waiting room experience.

Start a queuing system

Practically every good practice management system has it.  You can record a patient check-in and then update progress when the patient moves from step to step in the process.  

In a future post, we’ll get into the details of queuing systems, but for purposes of this writing, the main question is how does this alleviate waiting times?

If you are making full use of the system, you probably have a monitor posted somewhere in the vicinity of the doctor or clinical supervisor who can glance up at the screen on occasion.  That screen will list every patient in the office (or a code if your interpretation of HIPAA requires it), where they are in the process (waiting room, on deck, clinician chair, etc.), how long the patient has been at that stage and how long that patient has been in the office.  In a useful system, if the patient’s time exceeds certain thresholds (e.g. 15 minutes in the waiting room), that patient line will start flashing red.  If the patient is closing in the threshold, you might see a solid yellow highlight and so forth.

If there’s too much flashing red on the screen, you are behind and people are probably nervously or angrily checking their watches.  Time to step into gear.  Now, this by no means whatsoever says that a practice should shortcut/compromise treatment to catch up.  The red lights should signal that everyone should reduce the small talk (maybe keep that NCIS: New Orleans breakdown to just the ending) and make sure they are as organized as possible.  The manager should begin to make sure that people are doing OK and reassure patients that they are going to get seen as quickly as possible with the maximum level of patient care.

Use technology

As this is written in late 2014, every practice should offer a free wi-fi option.  Given the prominence of mobile devices, this is the go-to move in any experience in which you have to wait.  Airport gates, the lull before a concert and doctor’s offices all cause people to pull out their devices to check e-mail or Facebook feeds or whatever.  It’s easy enough for you to offer a free, public option (or an option in which you display the password for a protected connection).

A television is also a nice addition.  And I don’t mean the old 19-inch, black and white hanger showing the channel that has reruns of the local news.  Make sure it is of a strong quality (inexpensive) and you should include some of your own content.  If you keep wait times short enough, you shouldn’t need any more than 10 minutes of material to put on the air and looped.  Some ideas for the content include self-introductions and short bios from the doctor and staff, the latest promotion, discussion of the office’s referral program (you do have a referral program, right?), virtual office tour, advice on taking care of your mouth and other useful content. 

Break up the monotony

If you have someone with a strong, outgoing personality at the front desk (and if you read this blog, you have that person now), that person should occasionally engage patients in conversation even if it is about mundane topics about how their mouths are feeling, what brings them here today or beyond that, the patient’s favorite color or the weather.  Whatever the case may be, waiting presents a huge opportunity to get face-to-face with your patients and show them you are better and more pleasant than any of your competitors.

Observe

Do you often find yourself saying, “I am working all out during the day and we still can’t keep up?”  Before cutting back the schedule, take some days to closely examine how certain patients flow during a patient day.  The old “eye test” can prove to be quite valuable in determining why people are waiting.  Maybe one person isn’t able to keep up, maybe there’s a part of your patient flow process that slows everything down or you don’t have the right mix of appointment types.  Whatever the case may be, common intuition can provide you with enough basis for change.