When a patient enters your optometric practice, the efficiency of their visit is dictated by how quickly your employee at the front desk can get the patient from the waiting room to pre-testing. Unfortunately, time-consuming and error-prone tasks can complicate your staff’s responsibilities and weaken their ability to quickly get your patients through the exam.

Below are solutions for accelerating your office workflow.

Solutions To Office Workflow Obstacles At The Front Desk

Common Challenges At Your Front Desk

Before we reveal the solution to accelerating your workflow at the front desk, we need to identify common barriers to avoid. For years, manual processes were standard practice. However, more efficient processes have replaced these common challenges that may have been the norm not so long ago.

Common challenges faced at the front desk of an optometric practice include:

• Managing Patient Schedule Manually- Using outdated spreadsheets and appointment books creates a complex patient schedule that is difficult to modify and review.
  
  
• Filling Out Paperwork- Requesting that patients fill out their paperwork in the waiting room is a waste of everybody’s time. Once they have completed the forms, your front staff is obligated to enter the same data that the patient just wrote. As the staff reenters this information, the chance of data-entry errors increases.
  
  
• Calling Multiple Payers- Checking patient eligibility by calling each payer individually takes your staff away from addressing your patient’s questions and concerns. Your staff’s most important role in your optometric practice should be focused on ensuring the patient’s needs are met.

How A Modern Practice Management Solution Solves Office Workflow Constraints

To accelerate your office workflow from check-in to check-out, you need to use modern practice management and EHR solutions in your optometric practice. Modern optometry software, like Uprise, can accelerate the patient journey throughout the office workflow, including in the front office.

Using a built-in patient portal, you can send and receive secure messages with your patients, collect patient information before the appointment, and give your patients the ability to self-schedule.

The advanced scheduling tools provide your staff with the flexibility to view a summary of patient details, customize the calendar, and create or modify appointments on the fly. You can also check patient eligibility quickly from within Uprise.

With tools like the patient portal, advanced scheduling tools, and virtual eligibility checks, your staff in the front office can focus their attention on helping the patients in your practice to improve their visit.

For more tips on how you can improve your office workflow, download our Practice Efficiency ebook!