Resources for growth

<p>I wish I could say our clinic (&lt;3 years) was experiencing the same type of growth as yours.&nbsp; You seem lucky. Ours just stagnated in this economy.</p> <p>Here are some of the things we tried for a little while, being as how we only have a single doctor at our practice.</p> <p>1) Dedicate a surgical day.&nbsp; That way unexpected events during a surgery don't interfere with appointment times.&nbsp; If you have multiple doctors, one doctor can do surgery on Monday, one on Tuesday, etc, and then see appointments on another day. This worked for us until the economy tanked and we weren't scheduling enough surgeries to fill a day.&nbsp; Then we went back to two procedures a day early in the morning before appointments start. Again, with multiple doctors, schedule an "administrative" day where that doctor doesn't see appointments, but can catch up on their call-backs, referrals, etc.</p> <p>2) Job descriptions.&nbsp; Prioritize the job duties of your various team members so that not everyone is helping clients all the time.&nbsp; Not that helping clients isn't great, but your credentialed tech should not be answering client questions during surgery time.</p> <p>3) Departmentalize your team.&nbsp; Again, not that helping clients isn't a bad thing, but not everyone should be helping clients ALL the time.&nbsp; If your state requires credentialed technicians, you'll need one technician assined to surgery, one to treatment, and one to exam rooms.&nbsp; Or assign technicians to a particular doctor on a particular day.&nbsp; Train your lay staff and assistants in client education.</p> <p>4) Hire specific client-service staff.&nbsp; I've always wanted to do this, have a lobby conseaire (sp?) like they do in hotels.&nbsp; Not the receptionist, but someone else responsible for keeping the lobby neat and tidy, keeping the coffee area stocked, cleaning up outside, and to basically handle all client non-medical needs, hold pets as clients fill out forms, etc. so the receptionist can handle medical records, check ins, check outs, etc.</p> <p>5) Hire specific task staff.&nbsp; If your receptionist can't refile records because they are too busy meeting and greeting clients and scheduling appointments, you might have to hire a specific medical records person.&nbsp; If your techs can't clean exam rooms because they are assisting in treatment, you might have to hire specific exam room attendands/lay assistants.&nbsp; Hire a phone answerer.</p> <p>6) Crack the wip during down time.&nbsp; Have an extra thirty minutes between appointments...crack the wip on your staff to get stuff done.&nbsp; There is no excuse to have to stay after hours to do thing that could have been done in 30 minutes of gab time.</p> <p>7)&nbsp; Delegate to credentialed technicians.&nbsp; The doctors should not be taking xrays, doing labwork, or shaving hotspots.&nbsp; There are lots of things licensed and credentialed technicians can do that free up doctor time to write up reports and make phone calls.&nbsp; If your state does not required licensed or credientialed staff, you'll need to train these people pronto to a point where the doctors can trust handing off tasks to them.&nbsp; Nothing burns out a credentialed individual faster than being treated as a "glorified assistant."&nbsp; Techs want to use their skills, and the more you delegate to them, the better they get, the happier they are.</p> <p>8) STICK TO YOUR OFFICE HOURS!&nbsp; I found that the more we accepted walk-ins and after-hour appointments, the more stressed people got, and the more upset, and the more burnt out.&nbsp; Yes, we'll see walk-ins, but we make sure we tell that person that they have to wait until all the scheduled appointments are seen, which can be an hour or two.&nbsp; As long as they know there is a wait, most will wait, or schedule for an open appointments slot later in the day.&nbsp; We don't accept any appointments scheduled for 30 minutes before closing.&nbsp; That way if appointments run longer than anticipated, we have some lee-way.&nbsp; We are walking distance from a 24 hour emergency clinic, and all our overnight and after hour patients are sent there.&nbsp; Sure, we could take them, but we don't have overnight staff, and again, everyone is crankier because someone has to come back at night, or on their day off, or over the weekend, etc, and that leads to burn out.</p> <p>9) Schedule in "slack" time.&nbsp; We have our receptionist book appointments only every half hour.&nbsp; Then we have time between appointments for walk-ins, suprise emergencies, and to get stuff done.&nbsp; Sure, we see less appoint...

Hi there,

Here are a few more links you might find helpful:

A million-dollar growth spurt by Dr. Brian Huss, MS, DACVS

Staving off burnout by Dr. W. Bradford Swift

Make your practice run like clockwork by Mark Opperman, CVPM

Best of luck, and please let us know if there's anything else we can do!