March 2020 More Appointment Utilization

Today’s BIG Ideas Podcast is two ideas that data mine your appointment data to look for opportunities and potential problems.  The first idea comes from an orthopedic practice that co-owns an orthopedic hospital with the local hospital system.  The hospital used to manually look for open surgery slots and did not have the staff to manually look further into the future.  I’ll describe some of our logic to automate the process and email an exception report to better fill operating room times.  The second example is from a practice who wanted to track appointments scheduled but not moved when a provider signed out of the office.  In a large, busy practice this happens more than you would think.  The practice management software does not have a canned report or simple way to catch the problem, so we built our own.  Rather than complain about no shows or be frustrated with appointment issues that are out of your control, spend a few minutes data mining your appointment data for things you can control.  You will be glad you did.