An optimized patient workflow means less time goes to administrative tasks and more time can be spent interacting with you, the OD. Shorter overall appointment times mean you can see more patients in a day, the patients see that you respect their time, and you're not wasting any of your staff's resources.
To keep your patient visits to the ideal 45 minutes, you'll need to dissect your current process to see which parts can be made more effective. We want to share with you 5 areas for improving your patient workflow using Uprise that will help cut down on total patient appointment time and likely increase your patients' satisfaction.
5 Steps to Improve Office and Patient Workflow with Uprise
1. Lower Check-In Time to Under 3 Minutes
Less than 3 minutes for check-in time might seem quick, but if your practice is utilizing your patient portal, this shouldn't be a problem. Patients should be able to fill out all of their paper work and insurance information online before their appointment, meaning that they should be spending less time in your front office.
To help ensure your front office isn't held up waiting for no-show patients, be sure to utilize the Uprise patient recall system that is embedded within the overall practice management system.
With patient recall, you can send text or email reminders automatically asking patients to confirm their appointment. Click here to read our blog that demonstrates how Uprise can maximize the efficiency of your front desk. The information syncs back to your schedule, so you'll be able to fill spots that open up.
2. Get Your Pre-Exam Process Down to 5-10 Minutes
We've showed you how to utilize your technician in the pre-exam process to save your OD time. Remember all of the information that you had your patients enter in their portal online?
Uprise automatically integrates the patient's health records with the practice management solution in one platform.
This means that your technician can focus less on duplicate data entry, and more on completing the pre-exam test efficiently.
3. Narrow Down the Exam Time to 15 Minutes
Our system of solutions within Uprise helps your OD move quickly and efficiently through the exam process while allowing OD's to provide the best care possible for patients.
With SmartTouch EHR technology, all of the necessary patient information only needs to be entered once which makes diagnosis, ePrescribing, and providing referrals go by in the blink of an eye. A good workflow should allow your OD to see 3.5 - 4 patients per hour.
By cutting out phone calls and faxing methods to fill prescriptions, you'll be able to complete a patient's exam even faster. With ePrescribing the prescription information can be sent straight from your smart EHR system to the pharmacy, saving everyone valuable time.
4. Move Patients Through Your Dispensary in 15 Minutes
The time patients spend in your dispensary is probably the most flexible area when it comes to patient flow. You never want to rush a patient through your dispensary. Picking out the right frames can be a lengthy process for some patients for various reasons, including style choices and pricing. Patients who trust their optician's knowledge and opinion are more likely to make a buying decision during their appointment.
Think of the 15 minute guideline as the amount of time your optician should spend discussing lens options and placing the order online (not the amount of time the patient takes to select their frames).
Uprise electronically carries lens prescription information over to your dispensary with no delay. Embedded with Frames Data's catalog of over 40,000 frames, opticians and technicians won't need to sift through manual pages or worry about data entry errors again.
5. Get Patients Through Check-Out in Less Than 5 Minutes
If your optician is able to utilize Uprise's practice management system to quickly create an invoice for your patients and automatically send it to account receivables, then your practice's check-out time should be short. However, we think that the actual payment collection process should be left to the front desk. This allows the front desk the opportunity to pre-schedule follow up appointments and schedule recall actions.
Can Uprise help you grow your practice?
By getting your patient flow down to 45 minutes, you'll increase patient satisfaction and grow your patient base more quickly.
Is your practice's workflow optimized? If you need materials to evaluate your practice's workflow, download our eBook below. The ebook comes with an interactive kit that will help you evaluate your practice efficiency and see how Uprise can fit into your practice seamlessly.
