Last week, we began our discussion with our first four time-saving tips. Here are five more ways to use your time wisely and save time for the important things in life:
- Schedule your patients appropriately
Do you frequently double or even triple book your patients? It is fine to double book if one of the patients is mainly being treated by your nurse, medical assistant or PA and all you have to do is go in and do a final check. The same goes for your post-operative patients. If you are running behind, you should do a time-motion analysis, where you take a 3x5 index card and time the patient’s appointment.
- Have patient education information to handout
When seeing a patient, you should make treatment packets for the top 10-20 diagnoses. Include in these packets, the following:
-Treatment options. All the possible options you might discuss with the patient at the time of service. Circle the ones you recommend initially.
-Educational information in order for the patient to review the problem and its causes.
-A DVD on that specific problem. There are companies that have ready-made videos that you can purchase. In addition, you can just take a video camera and make a 2-3 minute video and put it on a disc.
-Patient testimonials. If your state allows it, having other patients discuss their experiences is priceless. The testimonials make the patient feel comfortable and trusting. Make sure you get the patient’s written agreement to publish these success stories.
-Information about the doctor and the practice. Again, this increases the trust effect and makes them think you are the expert and that they made the right choice in seeing you.
- Learn to delegate and empower your staff
Your staff wants to help out and when you delegate important tasks, it empowers them. It makes them feel you trust them to handle such a task. The key to delegating is not just to give someone a job to do so you can forget about it. It is important to follow-up with the person who is doing the task, and find out the outcome of the assignment. Delegating saves you time in the end. You might need to train someone on the task, but after you do, that employee will now know how to do something.
- Wasting precious time between surgical cases
Use this time to make phone calls, dictate the operative note, sign charts, or even bring a book that helps with your mindset or with how to run your office more efficiently.
- Take time to rejuvenate yourself
Exercising, yoga, or meditation will help you with clearing your stress. This will make you feel more relaxed, thus you will become more efficient.
We at Top Practices are dedicated to giving you more free time while building your dream practice.
Rem/Peter
P.S. Remember, you can email us any time with any question.
