They sound like adjectives from your favorite ice cream's latest ad campaign, but they're really terms used in the optometric field; and despite differing definitions, they both indicate the same thing: Movement. Movement throughout an office; movement to another practice. In our field, with its unique fusion of medical assessment and high-end retail experience, keeping patients moving at a steady pace throughout the office—and back to the same office a year later—is key to build a thriving practice, and to keep a thriving practice thriving. Too often, though, that movement either becomes an unstoppable force or an immovable object: I regularly hear stories of patients either shuffled too quickly out of the exam room, or left to watch the paint dry for unacceptable periods of time in the exam room. Either experience can result in the loss of a patient, an event which can have consequences reaching far beyond a single person walking out the door; as discussed in another article, negative word of mouth has much further reaching implications than positive. The goal, then, becomes moving a patient throughout the office at an acceptable rate; unlike many situations individuals face in a practice, though, this is something that requires high-precision cooperation between multiple individuals fulfilling a variety of functions in the office. Though often overlooked, timely patient flow can be the most difficult to achieve, high-intensity component of your daily operations; it's also, perhaps, the most important. How, then, can an office ensure patients keep moving at an acceptable pace, giving them the ideal examination and purchase experience?
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In order to ensure an acceptable patient flow, an honest assessment of your current flow rate is necessary. Patients need to be booked according to the rate at which they can actually be seen, not according to an ideal rate. Consider: If your office is currently seeing one patient every half hour, booking patients according to the hour loses time that could potentially be used for more appointments. Conversely, if your office is currently seeing patients every hour to hour and a half, but bookings are on the half hour, this means that individuals are losing time waiting to be seen; and while such time can be used to help patients select frames and lens options, they can still grow impatient during this period, leading to a higher likelihood of churn. If your current rate of flow doesn't match desired rate, more or less booking won't compensate for that; the problem must be identified within the flow itself, and adjusted accordingly.
Division of Duty
Multitasking is, of course, a necessity in any workplace, especially one in which aspects of a given position overlap with another. However, failure to delineate certain duties, or relying on every staff member to consistently be Jacks or Jills or all trades, can result in rapid breakdown of patient flow. Are opticians consistently answering phone calls? Are receptionists regularly called upon to framestyle? Are billing clerks running the FDT? On a hectic day, in an emergency, or under special circumstances, cross-training is a wonderful way to ensure the office runs smoothly. Removing any division of duty and relying on every staff member to consistently switch between roles can be frustrating and overwhelming to the staff. Further, having an individual whose primary training and specialty lie in one area attempt to work in another can be a disservice to the patient, depriving him or her of the highest level of care and expertise. This also leads into the matter of…
Adequate Staffing
While it may be necessary to book for the practice you've got, you may want to consider staffing for the practice you want. Many of the problems described above are the direct result of understaffing: Having too few people to handle the workload generated by patient flow, requiring that those individuals be stretched too thin. In such an environment, employees burn out more quickly, experience more frustration with their jobs, and suffer burnout more quickly and at a higher rate than in workplaces where duties are equally handled by a diverse number of individuals.
Adequate staffing doesn't necessarily mean having a large number of employees on hand at all times. Consider tracking scheduling and buying patterns of your patients and then staffing accordingly for higher-traffic days or periods. This might mean simply bringing in an extra person or two on your busier days, or even hiring seasonal help for more hectic periods of the year.
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Multitasking is a must in today's high-tech, fast-paced society. The key to this, though, is observing a set of priorities when multitasking so that the most important and time-sensitive tasks are completed first. Although the order of operations in your office can be adjusted accordingly to compensate for a patient running late or an emergency, patients should be greeted, pretested, taken to the room, examined, and allowed to purchase glasses in a timely manner, with each step of the process flowing smoothly into the next. Delays in between steps of the process break up the flow of time for the patient, allowing for them to become more impatient, frustrated, and more likely to leave in the middle of the process and/or spread negative word of mouth. Anything which interferes with this process, excepting an emergency, should take a backseat priority: Tidying up, rearranging the frame board, general administrative tasks, etc. are all things which can be done during the downtime between patients, or handled by individuals not directly involved in the processing of the patient. Once a patient has arrived for his or her appointment, he or she becomes the most important individual in the office; every action taken should be towards the furtherance of a quick, efficient, and pleasant experience for the patient.
Assessing the flow in one's office can be a difficult, frustrating process. It often involves analyzing faults, both in the operations of the office and of oneself, and it's often painful to honestly assess oneself for failings. Doing so can be immensely rewarding, though, by improving the operations of office, the morale of the individuals working there, and the productivity of the workplace.
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In 2009, Preston graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Liberal Arts from Lone Star College in Conroe, Texas. In 2011, he graduated Cum Laude from Sam Houston State University with a Bachelor's of Science.
Preston's interest in the history of eyewear goes back to his time in high school, when he developed an interest in all things vintage by completely missing the point of Bonnie and Clyde. Prior to his going to work in the optometric industry, he built up his body of knowledge through independent study.
In addition to his writing for The Opticians Handbook and 20/20, Preston has also been featured in Rue Morgue magazine, where he is a recurrent reviewer of horror and science-fiction DVDs. His fiction writing has been featured three times in Swirl magazine, the literary arts journal of Lone Star College and Montgomery County. An essay on the life and death of British horror actress Vanessa Howard is scheduled to appear in the Spring issue of the quarterly horror journal, Screem.
Preston lives in Conroe with his wife, Kayleigh, and his ego, Ted.
