No matter what your profession is, everyone would like to maximize their work-life balance. However, for many eyecare professionals, playing the part of the doctor, practice owner, and manager makes it difficult. But, by developing strict time management practices, you can use your day more effectively, optimize your office workflow, and improve your optical practice efficiency.

Below are some time management tips to help you manage your day more efficiently to help produce a better work-life balance.

How To Improve Optical Practice Efficiency

Grouping your patients into time blocks based on the exam type will help you move from patient-to-patient without having to switch gears. This patient scheduling tip will lead streamlined appointments to let you see more patients in a shorter amount of time.

If there is a way to automate manual tasks, then you should automate it. Manual tasks are inefficient and error-prone. When you take the time to automate manual tasks, you minimize the impact of implementing errors and free-up time to focus on what matters; improving patient care.

Things you should automate in your practice to free-up time and increase the quality of patient care include:

• Sending appointment reminders to your patients via secure email or text to remind them of their upcoming appointments
• Recommending diagnosis, treatment, orders, special testing, and patient education based on best practices using Clinical Decision Support within your EHR
• Compiling the right ICD 10 codes inside the EHR, based on the diagnosis
• Updating software versions by using a SaaS provider for your EHR and practice management software
• Synchronizing allergy and prescription data throughout the entire system using an ePrescribing tool
• Posting Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA)

If you can’t automate, you can always delegate. For example, there are a lot of tasks that you are performing that you can probably delegate to your Technician during the pre-exam phase. When you delegate these tasks off your plate, you free yourself up to focus on the critical thinking that is required to diagnose your patient problems accurately.

Some of the responsibilities that you can hand-off to your Technician include:

• Lensometry
• Ocular Motility
• Cover Testing
• Confrontation Fields
• Stereopsis Testing

By delegating tasks, automating error-prone steps, and clustering your patient schedule by exam type, you can optimize your office workflow and improve your optical practice efficiency.

For more tips on improving your optical practice efficiency,download this ebook.