Three doctors plus five locations plus 45 staff members plus 4,000 active patients equals the potential for a scheduling nightmare. We had a near nightmare on our hands as our scheduling templates had no structure except for the number of chairs and exam appointments. As long as our scheduling coordinator could find the necessary number of units for an appointment, she could schedule a procedure anywhere she wanted, even if that meant using multiple chairs. It was also possible to have two laser procedures scheduled side-by-side at the same time that the orthodontist was supposed to be in the new patient exam. Our doctors finally had enough of this chaos and made the decision that the scheduling protocol had to change
We were referred to Sue Hanen of impact360 for her scheduling expertise. We decided that we were no longer going to create our daily schedules haphazardly. We were going to create a block schedule unique to each of our locations, doctors, and days of the week. This was a huge project that took approximately a year to complete and was not something we could have tackled successfully without Sue’s leadership.
—Rhonda DeLong
To read the full text of this article from the most recent issue of Orthodontic Products, click here.
