Optimizing provider time is one of the most important tasks of the Business Team. It also is one of the most complicated ones. That is because we have many people scheduling at one time; treatment coordinators and patient care center members. Being on the same page for the rules is very important, especially as we grow as a practice. Following the rules and using good techniques is how we are going to achieve optimal scheduling everyday!
Here you will find a treatment appointment. On the left of the appointment, you can see boxes, both white and a Doctor’s color. The colored boxes are units of time that the doctor is scheduled to be inside this appointment. As you can see, in the last 60 minutes of the appointment, the doctor is not going to be in the appointment. One way we could potentially schedule the doctor more appointments is to dovetail his schedule.
What is dovetailing?
Dovetailing is when you schedule appointments so the provider time does not have any holes (white squares) in it. A typical appointment starts with a white square, which indicates the doctor is not with the patient. That white square is for many things, one example is seating a patient in a suite. Typically, you would want that white square to overlap with a colored square.
One way we can prevent overcrowding and purposeful scheduling is having Doctor Rock Blocks.
This also helps with scheduling to goal and receiving the incentives because we are not filling the schedule with small production/ no production appointments. This allows us to schedule fillings but also keeps us accountable for larger appointments as well. That way, no patient needs to wait to be seen because only large appointments are on the schedule. (Rocks vs Sand)
Below you can see Dr. Shrestha is scheduled for many appointments. Are they scheduled correctly for the Doctor to optimize her time and the dental assistants to have time for their work?
Yes. If you look at the image above, you can see that the green squares on each appointment do not overlap. You can also tell because near the time on the schedule, you have green and pink bars, these bars show a better picture of when the Doctor is scheduled for appointments. This example shows that the Dr. Shrestha is not scheduled to be in two appointments at a time and the columns are not packed more than can be done for the assistants.
Below you will see Dr. Marvelli’s schedule. Is this schedule done correctly?
No. As you can tell from the bar next to the time in the schedule, she was double booked. The lines in the boxes indicate that she is supposed to be in two places. One example that I could fix this schedule is to move the LOE appointment to arrive at 8:10AM so the appointments dove tail.
