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6 Tips to Help you Handle More Patient Visits

6 Tips to Help you Handle More Patient Visits

Running a medical office is no easy feat. There’s a lot to manage on a typical day. But when it’s busier than usual, healthcare providers would love to know how to handle more patients.

We want our medical offices to run smoothly and efficiently. The more efficient your medical office is, the more profitable it is.

In this blog post, we’re going to tell you how to handle increased patient visits. If you implement these 6 tips into your medical office, then those stressful days at work are going to be more manageable.

1. Enable Online Scheduling

The work starts before the patient even steps foot on-site. Imagine a typical hectic day at work. Now throw in ten people who aren’t even there for an appointment. They’re just standing in line and taking up space, time, and resources.

Or imagine how stressful it is to have the phone ringing for the tenth time today when there are so many patients who haven’t even been seen yet.

Online scheduling can allow patients to set up an appointment without having to even talk to anyone. How great is that?

Allowing patients to schedule appointments online could save you a lot of time. If they could cancel them online too, then that would allow workers to change their plans for that time-slot and do something more productive instead of just waiting.

2. Automate Reminders

Reminding your patients to pay off their bills, come in for their appointment, or confirm a booking can save everyone a lot of time and stress.

Automating this process makes everything a lot easier. There’s no reason a person has to be the one sending out these reminders and confirmations. Automation software could do it much quicker.

Your patients are busy people too, so they might forget when their appointment is. If they receive an automated text 24 hours before their scheduled appointment, they’re much more likely to show up!

Doing the same for payments could save a lot of time and improve cash flow.

3. Make the Space Visible and Accessible

Making your office accessible for everyone could help manage increased patient visits. Enforcing correct parking could let patients find parking much faster.

Big signs directing patients where to go could let them get to their appointment on time. Remember, they don’t know this place as well as you do!

The goal is to get everyone in and out as quickly as realistically possible, your patients would appreciate the effort.

4. Direct Traffic Flow

Much like the previous tip, use big signs to let patients know where to go. Let workers know that directing their patients on where to go would improve workplace efficiency.

Try to make every process smooth and easy. Are patients checking in, paying, and scheduling appointments in the same spot? That’s a huge waste of time for everyone involved. Delegate the tasks and the space.

5. Plan for the Day Ahead

Planning plays a vital role in your efficiency. Whether it’s the morning of or the night before, planning for a work day could help you streamline everything.

Think about or write down what you have to do for the day. When can it get done? Should you do it before or after doing another task?

If possible, give everyone a few minutes to do the same for themselves. A bit of time could go a long way in terms of efficiency.

Putting up team to-do lists and calendars could also prove to be helpful.

6. Make Paperwork Easy with Dragon Medical One

You can follow all these tips but your office will still struggle with increased patient visits. Why? It all comes down to one huge time-waster: Paperwork.

Whether you’re jotting down patient information, typing it in, or even putting time aside for it—You’re going to spend a lot of time on paperwork. A lot of time that could have gone into seeing more patients.

Physicians spend nearly 2 hours on electronic health record tasks for every hour spent on direct patient care. Think about how much time that really is.

Dragon® Medical One is an innovative software application that can absolutely change the way you run your office.

Instead of typing in patient information, you can simply speak and the software will enter whatever you said into the system.

The software is designed for mobility, speed, accuracy, and flexibility. You can make it your own by customizing the vocabulary and adding custom templates. Improve efficiency and handle more patients by cutting down on screen-time, administrative work, and hours spent doing repetitive typing.

Change your office efficiency for only $99 a month. Save 2 hours every day for less than the price of a cup of coffee! Go beyond normal dictation, physicians with Dragon dictation software can finish EHR tasks up to 3 times faster than typing with unrivaled accuracy.

Interested in slashing your documentation time with Dragon Medical One? Use the buttons below to learn more or start your risk-free trial!