Scheduling appointments on your computer is probably the single most important thing you can do for checkout efficiency and accurate retention. Many doctors focus on billing and reporting features when looking at software without realizing the importance of computerized scheduling.
Why is it so important? Running the front desk is central to so many areas of your practice: time management, patient flow, accurate billing, efficient collections, and patient retention. Yet with everything a CA has to do at the front desk there is a challenge to remember everything. The InPhase software is designed to take advantage of the scheduled appointments to keep things from falling through the cracks.
Just by looking at the screen you can tell:
- Who is scheduled
- What type of visit they are scheduled for
- Who is late
- Who is late (but has already been called)
- Who rescheduled
- Who canceled
- And more.
What's more, having the patient's names on the screen in front of you - versus the several clicks and key strokes required to search for the patient's name - is the difference between night and day… making checkout a click away, missed appointment follow-up a click away, visit stats a click away, and more.
Finally, maintaining appointments on the computer not only allows us to catch the patients who are late and/or miss their appointments, it also allows us to catch the more difficult patients: those patients who left without a future appointment.
As you look at the other areas of the software, keep in mind that much of the speed and efficiency that is achieved in those areas had its foundation in the scheduled appointment.
Scheduling
Scheduled Appointments - The most common appointment is one that is scheduled for a patient for a specific day at a specific time.
Timeless Appointments - Many Chiropractors have those patients who are "see-you-on-Wednesday" kind of patients. They will commit to a day, but they don't want to commit to a time. With InPhase, you can create appointments for these kinds of patients and they will be listed in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen - in the order they are most likely to come in (based on their history or arrival times). This way we can keep tabs on them without cluttering up the schedule with fictional time appointments.
Walk-In Appointments - For those patients who walk-in without an appointment, you can create a walk-in appointment. This allows you to quickly add someone to the schedule, check them out, follow up if they leave without a future visit, and keep stats on scheduled versus walk-in appointments.
Call-In Appointments - Similar to a walk-in appointment, many patients call ahead to see if you can fit them in. Again, as above, the call-in appointments are easily added and tracked.
Family Appointments - Whenever you add an appointment for a patient, InPhase gives you an option to include family members as well. This feature is also nice in that it makes it appear that you remember everyone's name. "Will James be coming in with you?"
New Patient Appointments - Sometimes you need to add an appointment for a new patient before you know anything about them. InPhase will allow you to create a new patient appointment with just minimal information.
Recurring Appointments - If you have patients who come in on a fixed routine, you can use the recurring appointment feature. This way you can define the patient's schedule once and the computer will expect them at the same days, same time (or timeless) each week.
Appointments for Patient with Multiple Accounts - What happens if one of your patients gets into an automobile accident and needs to be seen as a PI case? Many systems require that you enter that patient in as a new patient with a new number. Yet what does that do to your stats? How many new patients do you really have? And what about retention? Is Mr. Johnson still coming in or not? How do you easily tell the difference between Mr. Johnson the inactive cash patient versus Mr. Johnson the active PI case? Or what if Mr. Johnson the cash patient is still being seen for massage or extremity adjusting that is not covered by the PI case? With InPhase, you will be able to handle patients with multiple accounts quickly and easily… without losing accuracy in your stats or patient retention.
Display Options
The InPhase software gives you a number of options for customizing the appearance and display of the appointments. You can setup the appointments in rows or columns. You can define the colors for each type of visit. You can block out certain times of day or days of the week or even vacation time.
Some of the options - such as number of rows - are limited by the size and resolution of your monitor.
Patient Flow Options
By just looking at this screen, you can tell...
- Bob Teskie has been checked out
- Tommy Ingles is late
- Barb Mikell is late (but has been called)
- Carol holt is here and waiting
- Sam Hayes is back in care
- Tara Cash cancelled
- Mary Holcomb rescheduled
- Jeannie Wells is still pending
If you want to take the time to maintain the information, InPhase will tell you how long people waited, how long they were in care, and how long they were in the office