How to Increase Patient Volume Without Hampering Quality of Care

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How to Increase Patient Volume Without Hampering
Quality of Care For many health care providers,
it seems like there arent enough hours in the
day to help all the patients who need
assistance. They could be wondering how to
increase patient volume on a given day.
Fortunately, there are ways they could boost
these numbers while still providing top-notch
care. Use entry questionnaires Increasing
patient volume could begin before people even
step foot in your office. Offices could use
electronic health records (EHRs) to save time and
take some of the guesswork out of office visits.
Using medical EHR software, your staff members
could determine patients who might need new
prescriptions for their glasses or contact
lenses, or people who have experienced multiple
flare ups of chronic diseases. Armed with this
knowledge, your staff members could send these
selected patients entry questionnaires before
their appointments. These questionnaires could
ask them how their conditions are progressing or
whether they think theyll need new eyewear
prescriptions. When they receive answers to the
patients questionnaires, your staff members
could learn which patients may be in the market
for new glasses and which ones may require more
intense assistance for their conditions and thus
require longer appointments. Knowing these
things could help staff members schedule
appointments that are the right length, less
likely to run over into other appointments, and
less likely to cause delays and cancellations for
others. Customize your EHR and PM systems Staff
members can also deploy medical EHR and PM
(practice management) systems in other ways.
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The best optometry EHR systems are customizable,
so if your practice has that option, consider
taking it. You might want to combine your EHR and
PM systems to streamline information and
processes. For example, EHR records may indicate
that patients last visited your office about a
year ago and are due for other appointments soon.
Your practice management system could send texts
or email messages to these patients that include
links that let them schedule their upcoming
appointments. Once patients schedule these
visits, your PM system could send text, email, or
phone messages to remind them to attend. Letting
patients schedule these visits is convenient for
them. Its also convenient for staff members who
have more time to see more patients and attend to
the practices many other tasks. Ask patients
for feedback You could also use questionnaires
and practice management software for other
purposes. Collecting feedback is one such
purpose. Your office could ask patients to visit
a website to complete an anonymous survey. Or you
could also give questionnaires after office
visits or send questionnaires on postcards with
prepaid postage.

• The questionnaires could ask
• What do you like about our practice?
• What do you dislike about our practice?
• What could the practice do better?
• What suggestions do you have?
• In addition, you could ask patients to rate how
  well your practice performs certain tasks using
  different measurement scales.
• Asking on questionnaires means you dont spend
  time answering these questions during office
  visits when you might not have the time or
  resources to do so.
• Although answering may take some effort, youll
  have insights into what patients really think
  about you, your staff, and your practice as a
  whole.

You could solve problems before they worsen, and
you could also prevent
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• other problems, which could save time and hassle
  and give you more opportunities to focus on your
  patients.
• Cross-train your staff
• By working together, you and your staff members
  could also make time for more patients and
  prevent hassle in other ways.
• Cross-training is one such strategy. As its name
  indicates, it involves training staff members for
  many roles, not just the positions they were
  hired to cover.
• Medical practices require multiple people to
  operate. If someone is out sick or absent for
  another reason, their work and responsibilities
  are still there, even if they arent.
• But if practices train people how to perform
  their jobs and their colleagues jobs, they
  ensure that the practices are still doing all the
  work they need to do.
• Staffing shortages could make it harder to see
  large numbers of patients and carry out other
  duties. Well-trained employees could prevent such
  shortages from happening.
• Employ a medical scribe
• Hiring additional employees (and other kinds of
  employees) could also boost your patient volume
  and keep your practice running smoothly.
• Other such employees might include scribes.
  Scribe America defines a medical scribe as a
  personal assistant for a health care provider,
  which means someone working in this role could
  fulfil many office duties.

professionals dont have to take time to do those
things. They could assist
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multiple additional patients instead of labouring
over the paperwork of the patients they just
saw. Spend time communicating during
appointments Taking the time to talk with
patients could help medical professionals boost
their patient volumes.
Such conversations are other things that may
initially take time, but in the end, might
ultimately save it. Why? Just like patient
questionnaires, conversations could help you
understand how patients really interact with your
practice and how they feel about it. Talks could
help you determine if somethings wrong and
develop solutions before the situation worsens.
They could help you build a warm relationship and
sense of trust that encourages your patients to
speak to you if other things go wrong. Or, if
patients mention other parts of your practice
that work well for them, you could keep doing
what youve been doing. This consistency and
commitment to excellence could keep their trust
and help you and your staff run your practice
more smoothly. Even while youre trying to
increase patient volume, its important to
remember that patients arent numbers or cases.
Theyre people. Talking with people, modifying
your practices processes, and contacting us
about technology that could enhance patients
experiences could help you see and assist as many
patients as possible.