In an optometric practice, time is money. Your daily mission is to maximize your patient schedule without decreasing the quality of care you administer. Luckily, with the right technology, your practice can improve your patient schedule while reducing the workload of your staff.
Using a patient portal, your practice can improve your schedule by giving more responsibility and flexibility to your patients. This post explains the benefits a patient portal will have on your schedule.
3 Ways a Patient Portal Will Improve Your Schedule
Simplify Scheduling
Traditionally, the amount of time your front office spends on the phone with patients who are attempting to schedule appointments is time-consuming to your practice and your patients. With an online patient portal, your patients have the ability and control to find and schedule appointments that work for them. With online scheduling, there’s no need for your patient to call the office. Best of all, they can schedule on their own time, not just when your practice is open.
Shorter Appointments
One advantage of a patient portal that will surely make your patients happy is that they can shorten the amount of time they spend in the waiting room, meaning shorter appointments. With a patient portal, your patients can fill out and securely submit their pre-appointment paperwork to your EHR system before the exam.
For your practice, this could make it possible for you to see more patients. Plus, your front desk team is going to be able to reduce their data entry work since you patients are directly entering their info into their record doing the work for themselves!
Provide Access to Personal Medical Records
Scheduling appointments to deliver information may not always be necessary. Sometimes, all your patient needs is a copy of their prescription or education material on their diagnosis and treatment. With a patient portal, your patients will have access to all of their personal medical records and can view diagnosis-based education material on their own time. This frees-up your patient schedule and reduces the amount of time your front office staff spends answering phone call questions.
For more tips on streamlining your practice workflow using optometry software, download the ebook below!
