Managing patient scheduling is a form of art. Patient scheduling requires maintaining a healthy balance between patient inflow and outflow. If not managed properly, whether on paper or online, it may lead to an uneven stream of patient flow leading to less satisfied patients and frustrated staff members. Lack of a structured scheduling system always results in dissatisfied patients and loss of revenue

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Understanding the art of patient scheduling to improve
patient flow
Managing patient scheduling is a form of art. Patient scheduling requires to maintain a healthy
balance between the patient inflow and outflow. If not managed properly, whether on paper or
online, it may lead to uneven stream of patients leading to less satisfied patients and frustrated
staff members. Lack of structured scheduling system always results in dissatisfied patients which
ultimately leads to loss of revenue.
Industry fact states that only 49% of patients always see providers within 15 minutes of their
appointment times
Effective patient scheduling to improve the revenue
A structured appointment scheduling system can go a long way toward improving revenue and
increasing patient satisfaction in a medical practice. Traditional method of patient appointment
scheduling lacks many administrative qualities which prove inefficient for patient scheduling can
hamper the patient flow. Hence, it is very important for a physician to manage patient
scheduling in order to improve patient flow and enhance the revenue.
Although patient scheduling looks like a simple administrative task, it could not be left upon to
be managed on its own. It is the main reason to run the healthcare facility smoothly resulting in
increased revenue. With effective scheduling practices in place, you can see more patients while
reducing stress for both you and your staff and boosting profitability.
Let's discuss some of the strategies that might help you ensure the efficiency of patient
scheduling system:
 Set visiting goals for patients:
Before putting the patient scheduling system in place, healthcare providers must set a certain
goal of patient visit on day-to-day basis. As a physician, you need to decide upon how many
patients, on average, you wish to see in your facility a weekly basis. You also need to work
upon the number of days your patients can wait for you to be seen in order to optimize the
patient scheduling effectively.
 Make strategy for patient visit:
After setting the goal for patient visit, the next step is to place a scheduling strategy in place to
reduce patient wait time and make optimum use of the time spent in seeing the patients
visited. The most effective strategy for this is 'modified-wave scheduling'. In this scheduling
technique, patients are double-booked in the first slot of every hour. The rest of the hour
available can be utilized to catch up on patient visits in case you are running behind your time
schedule. Booking patient visits on hourly basis, you can effectively manage the set back time
in case you are running behind schedule.
 Plan for downtime
In case you are planning for some downtime, be it a family vacation or an out-of-town
conference, be careful to schedule your appointments accordingly. If you are not careful in
scheduling patient visits when you are unavailable for longer periods, your practice can be
thrown into chaos. In such cases, make sure you begin to reduce the number of patients you
see, and also reduce the number of routine appointments for follow ups.

2. End to End Medical Billing Solutions
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http://www.medicalbillersandcoders.com
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Copyright ©-2013 MBC. All Rights Reserved.
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 Coordinate with staff members:
once you've placed the scheduling strategy in place, make sure that your staff and physicians
are on same page when it comes to patient flow essentials. It is recommended that you put
these policies in writing and distribute it amongst your staff so that there is no chance of
miscommunication. When it comes to patient scheduling, it is necessary that your staff
understands which patient needs to be seen on an urgent basis and what kind of patients can
be scheduled together.
 Plan your schedules ahead of time
The most important way to manage the patient flow effectively is to plan ahead of the
schedule. Make sure that your scheduling staff has a clear picture of upcoming patient's
appointments and time requirements. Ensure that additional time requirements for
complicated cases and patient follow ups are addressed while scheduling an appointment.
Medicalbillersandcoders.com has been successfully providing medical billing services for over a
decade now across all 50 US States. With a vast array of services available with MBC, our clients
can easily concentrate on patient scheduling to optimize their revenue. Our clients rely on MBC
for well informed decisions, improved communication between physicians; tracking and
reporting; assistance with medication safety and sustaining quality of healthcare, so that they
can concentrate on improved patient scheduling strategies at their practice and stay fully
committed to their profession.