Here’s the dilemma, as submitted by a CAM doc:

“I had a new patient call looking for an appointment as soon as possible. My new patient visits are an hour long, and even though I wasn’t even close to fully booked that week, I couldn’t see the patient until the following week. My book was full of 15 and 30 minute gaps in between visits.”

I call these gaps “islands” and they can bring a busy practice to its knees. The problem is widespread among CAM practices – my feeling is that it’s a bad habit that practitioners fall into when they first start out. On startup, you need a little time between patients to chart, get prepared, de-stress. And the time is generally available, because you’re not that busy yet. So you (and your staff) fall into the habit of leaving little gaps between patients.

The Solution
The solution is simple: make a “no island” policy for your appointment schedule, and enforce it with your staff. This means every appointment has to be booked immediately before or after another one. No gaps!

This offers a couple of great benefits: a) you can see more clients in a day, and b) if you’re not busy, you can go home early. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending 8 hours in your office for 3 hours worth of client visits.

Do Your Part
You’ll also find your staff will tend leave these gaps if you have a habit of running late on your appointments. It can be very uncomfortable for the person at your reception desk to sit with a room full of impatient patients; over time, they’ll start leaving little holes for you to “catch up”. So try to stay on time!

This solution’s a quick one to implement. It takes about 60 seconds. Less if you just email your staff this post… 🙂