| Physicians
Practice's
Ask an Expert
is a question and answer forum featuring
leading practice management experts who may or may not be
employed by Physicians Practice. On average, Physicians Practice
receives 170 questions per month from physicians, office managers,
office administrators and others. Have a question about the
operation of your practice? Visit www.PhysiciansPractice.com.
Your question will be answered within three business days.
Q.
Does every physician
in my practice need his or her own office?
A.
It's traditional to give every physician an office, but it's
hard to do when real estate prices are exploding and practices
need to make the most efficient use of space. The new trend
in facilities management is rooms used by many physicians
for various purposes. For example, practices are putting in
private dictation offices — one for every three exam
rooms. Some are putting many physician desks in one room.
Others are experimenting with consult rooms, private space
where physicians can talk one-on-one with patients outside
of exam rooms. The consult rooms are shared by anywhere from
three to six physicians — just not all at once.
Q.
How many chairs do we need in the waiting room?
A. To
determine how many chairs you need in your waiting area, do
the following two-step calculation for each subspecialty in
the practice:
(number of doctors
seeing patients at once) x (patient-per-hour rate of those
doctors) x (tag-a-long factor) = (number of people coming
to facility per hour).
Now, having made that
calculation, you'll need to take one more step:
(number of people
coming to facility per hour) - (number of exam rooms in
subspecialty) - (sub-wait seats) = (number of chairs in
waiting room).
The tag-a-long factor
is an increase to allow for family. Generally, use 1-1/2 family
per patient, but this needs to be increased for pediatrics,
and can be decreased in some subspecialties (like neurology,
GYN, etc.)
To make this formula
work, the doctor has to show up on time and the appointment
schedule for each doctor needs to be coordinated with that
doctor's patient output.
Q.
What is the average
time it takes before a patient will abandon a call?
A.
The average time before a call is abandoned is just two minutes,
based on observations in practices nationwide.
Q.
How should I
track call volume?
A.
Your phone service may be able to provide a general report
of how many calls you get per hour or per day. It might be
more useful to track it yourself and create a report that
lets you know what kind of calls you are getting. Ask receptionists
to keep track of how many calls they receive each day asking
about:
- appointment scheduling;
- medical advice and
whether the call was for a nurse or a doctor;
- test results;
- billing or insurance
questions;
- general information
(directions, hours) or
- prescription refills.
They might also track
how many calls are from other health care facilities or are
about administrative or management issues.
You can use this more
detailed information to better manage call traffic. For example,
if you get a lot of calls on test results, you might be able
to do a better job letting patients know to look for results
in the mail two weeks after their appointment. Or, you might
want to consider an automated system for disseminating results.
If there are a lot of calls asking about office hours, consider
including that information in your welcoming message or on
a Web site.
Q.
What's a telephony product and what can it do?
A. A
telephony product is any product that uses technology through
the telephone. Some of the tasks telephony products can handle
include:
- appointment reminders
and confirmation;
- lab results reporting;
- patient account balance/collection
calls;
- patient educational
material requests;
- pre-recorded patient
instructions/explanations;
- prescription refill
requests;
- staff notification
and
- patient satisfaction
surveys.
|
