A great relationship between an OD and their front office staff helps improve the quality of office teamwork and overall patient care. While this is somewhat obvious, there are some things that only front office staff can understand when it comes to getting through the work day.
The communication between front office staff and your patients is where first and last impressions of a practice are made and is crucial to achieving a great patient experience. We’ve collected some of the most common (and annoying) problems that arise in the front office, and offer a few optical software solutions to make staff and patients happier!
Save Your Front Office from these Daily Struggles with Optical Software
When the phone won't stop ringing
.
With the phone ringing at any time of day, it can be hard to remember to greet, smile, and pay attention to the patient standing in front of you. If your optical software comes equipped with a scheduler that allows for online appointment requests, it might help eliminate some office phone calls. On top of that, a software that comes with a patient portal creates a secure online avenue for patients to get treatment, prescription, diagnosis, and lab information all without picking up the phone.
Hearing all of the excuses from late and no show appointments
It’s only human nature to cover our own tail when we have committed to something. Listening to the excuses of late patients and dealing with schedule gaps due to no show patients is stressful on your staff. Integrating a patient recall solution allows you to create and send out custom automated messages to your patients via text or email reminding them of upcoming appointments. This will eliminate unnecessary phone calls from your staff and keep the schedule organized.
Constant paperwork mishaps, complaints, and endless questions
Sometimes, patients just don’t understand.
A little patience goes a long way here. Patients can be slow to fill out forms in the waiting room, and if your staff has to then enter them manually into your optical software, you are delaying your practice even further. Some patients also need a bit of help reading or understanding the paperwork given to them and could cause more inefficiencies. A patient portal can give patients all the information, instructions, and forms to fill out pre-appointment forms online, so that little to no time is wasted in your waiting room.
Patients complaining about eligibility for insurance
With a claims management solution already integrated into your optical software, you can check insurance eligibility right away for the patient and help eliminate questions all together. Right off the bat you should be able to provide the patient and the OD a full benefit profile. If any tests or treatments come up during the exam, the OD will be able to communicate to the patient right away what is covered by insurance and what isn't.
And of course, the calls and faxes to your labs
Checking on order status takes up the time of your staff with phone calls and faxes. This can get annoying when your practice is overwhelmed during busy season, but it can also lead to errors. Ordering your products online would eliminate the need for phone calls and make your patients happier. With VisionWeb built in to the system, you can quickly check order status for patients without picking up the phone and calling the lab.
Your front office staff are indispensable members to any practice. If they are off their game, it is likely that the rest of the practice will be thrown off also. It can be hard at times to remember that customer interaction is the most important job of the front office staff when they have multiple administrative and billing side tasks to deal with. A great environment and personality can’t be bought online, so try to promote a front office that is authentic and truly connects with patients online and offline.
Want to see what an efficient patient portal looks like? We updated our portal in Uprise.
