5 Bad Scheduling Habits That Are Hurting Your Patients and Your Practice

1. 5 Bad Scheduling Habits That Are Hurting Your Patients  and Your Practice  Inefficiencies in your patient scheduling     process are costing your practice thousands       of dollars in missed revenue opportunities.         Find out what they might be so you can fix         them. Here are five of the worst scheduling         habits that hurt many physical therapy       practices—and perhaps you are guilty of   doing them, too.                                                      1. You don’t have a system for filling                 schedules.   Cancelled appointments don’t necessarily have to turn into lost appointments. If you don’t fill           the gaps in your calendar, you’re throwing away money as well as a valuable therapist time.               Find a way to become more proactive about filling schedules using technological tools that                 patient scheduling software can provide.                                                  A comprehensive patient appointment scheduling solution has a wait list feature and allows         patients to book appointments faster, as well as change in their date/time if necessary. It can               help you fill your calendar and ensure that all your therapists stay busy—not twiddling their                 thumbs for hours doing nothing because of scheduling errors. Additionally, ​patient appointment scheduling software can generate reports that allow you to review cancellation         in no-show rates and determine how your clinic can better sell patient care plans.                                                                                          2. You don’t let patients make appointments after office hours.  Put yourself in the shoes of your patients. They are probably very busy all day, and by the                 time they remember to book an appointment, its past 5pm and your clinic is closed, with no               one to take their call.                                          Don’t let this happen. It’s time to optimize your access points and offer your patients the                 convenience of making appointments online or using their smartphones, 24/7. Investing in           patient scheduling software puts this option on your patients’ fingertips and modernizes your             front desk. It also frees up your front desk’s time and resources so they can focus on other                   tasks.                                                                3. You only use one approach to scheduling referrals.  Keep in mind that patients have different communication preferences; some prefer to call               while others prefer to use their emails. This is why it’s important to use a combination of                   e-mail, text, and phone communication when scheduling appointments and following up with             referrals.                                         

2. 4. Your therapists don’t follow up on patients who drop out of their treatment programs.  In many cases, patients would rather receive a follow-up call from the therapist who treated                 them—not your front desk staff. That’s not to say that your front desk is ill-equipped for such                 conversations. It’s just that from the point of view of patients, a call from a therapist is in               most cases more in impactful than a call from a random front desk person.                                                        5. Your appointment process takes too long.  Study showed that patients are more likely to drop a call if they are asked to wait too long               while booking a schedule over the phone. In fact, seven out of 10 patients would prefer to                 book their appointment online. And it’s easy to see why—a phone call takes about 8 minutes               while online scheduling takes a minute or less. This is why the most successful practices use               patient appointment scheduling software that allow their clients to go online, choose a date           and time, and secure a slot for their next visit.                                                                                                   Is your front desk still managing patient appointment schedules manually? It’s time to switch               to ​patient scheduling software to reduce errors, minimize no-shows, and maximize revenue. Apollo Practice Management has everything you need. If you are interested in trying out our           patient scheduling software, send a message or call us at 888 447 8065.