You’re the owner of your practice and being the boss has its perks! You get to be in-charge, make important decisions, and occasionally boss people around. It can be fun and all, but are you too distant from your staff that you lack the ability to see inefficiencies happening in your practice? You might have been too busy to realize that your staff is struggling with their daily tasks and your practice might not be doing as well as you think. The next time you make your rounds around the practice, walk through your office workflow from front office to billing, and listen out for these phrases.
4 Questions Regarding Your Office Workflow That You Need to Pay Attention To
“Why did we get another no-show this week?”
Front Office
No-shows are a waste of your practice’s time and resources. The key is to get a response from your patient as soon as possible, so you can fill the empty slot if they decide to cancel on you. It’s understandable that appointments that were scheduled 3 months ago can be hard to remember. A patient recall system can help send automated reminders to your patients, and some solutions even send reminders through different communication methods if a response is not received from one. If you have an ongoing issue with no-shows, maybe it’s best that your practice implement a no-show policy.
“Have you seen Customer X’s order we placed a week ago?”
Optical
A week is a really long time! That order should be ready for pick up in that amount of time. If you have missing orders, there could be a couple of things your practice might be doing wrong. If you’re faxing orders, the fax may not have gone through. If you phone in your orders, someone might have forgotten to call in the order after the lab missed the call. The worst part of both processes is that none of them provide online status tracking which makes it harder to track what exactly happened to your customer’s order.
Losing orders is an easy way to disappoint a customer and maybe even lose them. Forget the phone and fax and try online ordering! It’s fast, easy, and free. Your orders are submitted error-free, and you get online status tracking so you can keep your customer updated.
“Did we ever get paid for this claim?”
Billing
That’s a question you do not want to hear at all. Getting reimbursed for a claim directly impacts your practice’s revenue. Every time you hear it, it should be investigated immediately.
Filing claims manually exposes a claim to many errors due to duplicate entry and lack of automated error checking features. That’s not the most efficient way to file claims and you might find yourself buried and confused in a stack of paper EOBs.
A practice management system or clearinghouse will be able to provide reports on the number of accepted and rejected claims, making it easier to look into why they are rejected or denied in the first place. Was something coded wrong? Or was it submitted past the payer’s deadline for filing a claim? Make sure you correct the mistakes as soon as you finding out the source of the denial.
“Should we have a website or get on social media to promote our practice?”
Anywhere in Your Workflow
If you haven’t already established a website for your business or at least joined a social media platform, you’re missing out. It’s important to start competitive in this digital age. New patients are looking for eyecare practices online every day, and without a website, you’re not going to be found. Here are some tips to help build and strengthen your online presence:
- 4 Tips for Building a Perfect Website
- Social Media for Optometrists: Fostering Relationships with Patients
- 5 Tips to Improve Your Eyecare Practice's Social Media Presence
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