April 2020 Rethinking Patient Appointment Slots

Today’s BIG Idea podcast is based on some projects I have worked on recently for practices thinking about reopening or ramping up existing schedules.  Even as practices reopen, some practices are limiting patient appointment volume to maintain social distancing and the issue becomes how to prioritize appointment templates to get the most practice-wide value from appointment slots.  Practices are trying to fill not just exam rooms, but ancillary business and surgery slots.  Listen to ideas about how practices are mining appointment data to find patients most likely to need ancillary services or surgical procedures.  I will also discuss comparing average times from new patient visit to surgery to optimize appointment scheduling.  Listen for an idea or two about where to look for patients to fill revised appointment templates.  The nearby graphic is an example of a report I built last week.  Though much of the data is masked, you can see a Pivot Table with columns comparing the number of ancillary procedures and the time from new patient appointment to ancillary procedure by provider.  What would a similar analysis reveal for your practice?