Is your office availability discriminating against certain patients? Are your treatment days clashing with your time away from the office? Do you reschedule your patients more than they appreciate? Maybe this pearl can help resolve that.
Most of my clients use a Vertical Calendar and Rotational Schedule to get the best office utilization (in a multi-office practice) and availability (in a single- or multi-office practice). If you are always closed on certain days of the week in certain offices, you will not be starting those patients who can only come in on those days. Incidently, a lot of patients want to come in on Saturday, but when offered, few show up. The same holds true for evening days after 7:00 pm (except maybe for “adult” practices). No matter what your situation, you can still benefit from a rotational schedule that is integrated into a weekly, year-at-a-glance vertical calendar.
An example of a 6-week “Rotational Schedule”, that gives maximum availability for a Main and Branch office, is shown below:
WEEK |
MON |
TUE |
WED |
THU |
FRI |
SAT |
SUN |
|
1 |
B |
M |
M |
off |
M |
off |
off |
|
2 |
off |
B |
M |
M |
off |
off |
off |
|
3 |
M |
M |
B |
M |
off |
off |
off |
|
4 |
M |
M |
M |
B |
off |
off |
off |
|
5 |
M |
M |
B |
M |
off |
off |
off |
|
6 |
M |
M |
M |
off |
off |
off |
off |
See the attached Excel spreadsheet for a working year-at-a-glance vertical calendar.
See the attached Word file for the A~D~D~I~C~T procedure to implement this system.
