Exercise Prescription Software Creator Discusses 3 Scheduling Burdens - By: Dr. Jay Winburn

WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA - Scheduling appointments can be an issue to physiotherapy practices. It can be problematic for patients, as well.

The time commitment needed and lack of information on the patient's side can slow down a practice's efficiency, said Dr. Jay Winburn, president of Prognition Corp., which creates Mavenlive exercise prescription software.

Three reasons why scheduling appointments can be an issue are:

1. Scheduling uses a good amount of a practice's front office staff time. Patients can schedule a follow-up appointment while in the office, but might call later to change the time once they check their calendar.
2. Inefficiencies happen in scheduling specific types of appointments, usually resulting in certain appointments having too much time allotted, and not enough time given for others.
3. Training new employees can burden the scheduling process as well.

"If an office loses their receptionist, they can count on six months of poor scheduling until a new person learns how to schedule patients properly," Winburn said.
Regarding inefficiencies, the majority of schedules consider appointments to be five, 10 or 20 minutes. On the other hand, appointment types are not specified and the clinician usually isn't allowed to input the way in which they would like to be booked.

"If a practice is interested in maximizing adequacy and has the proper physical therapy documentation software, they can lay out their day to best treat patients," said Chris Metcalfe, Mavenlive’s vice president of technical development. "It can be an issue if a patient comes in for physiotherapy exercises, and they are booked in a manner that will throw off the schedule and cause the clinician to run late the rest of the day."

There are a few tricks to efficient scheduling, Winburn said. If a receptionist can track the types of appointments needed, such as slots for new patient evaluations or rehabilitation exercises, they're going to be able to cut down on wasted time. Instead, most receptionists use electronic schedulers much like a patient calendar, which are blocked off in 10-minute intervals. This type of scheduling doesn’t take advantage of computerization at all.

These are three tips to improving the schedule:
1. Clearly define the different types of appointments that the office schedules; don't clump things together that are actually different. Point out the characteristics of the different types of appointments. Does the specified appointment need a lot of communication between the clinician and patient? Is the appointment easily controlled and not likely to go past the scheduled time? Are there appointment types that are short and quick, ones that could allow the clinician to catch-up?
2. Think about how the clinician would like to group the appointments. Do they want to see a new patient during appointments that might take longer than expected? What would be good appointments to put prior to lunch and at the end of the day so that the clinician and staff can get out on time?
3. Think about the worst case scenario. How many unscheduled or "emergency" appointments does the clinician usually see in a day? Get the receptionist to write down statistics. Once this is known, extra time can be blocked off. The scheduled patients won't have to be kept waiting, which makes the day less stressful.

Quality rehab exercise software with scheduling capabilities- such as Mavenlive- allows the receptionist define a number of appointment types, such as new patient exam, exercise therapy or an ultrasound therapy session.

Mavenlive lets a receptionist define these appointment types and give a specific amount of time needed for each one. This system will store those pre-defined appointment times and enable the front desk to make a template of the type of morning or afternoon the clinician would want to have.

Improving scheduling could pay big dividends in productivity and profitability, Winburn said. Being more profitable doesn't necessarily mean working harder; working smarter is far less stressful.

About Mavenlive and Prognition Corp.
Mavenlive was created in March 2009 by Prognition Corp., a software company headquartered in Canada's National Research Council's Biomedical Commercialization Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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