Tracking your New Patients is the fastest and easiest way to determine how your systems are working. Making certain that you see that tracking, each and every month, is essential. How do you do this? It’s easier than you might think.
-Create a phone sheet if you don’t have one already. Any call inquiring about your office- for a Comprehensive Evaluation, Consult or an Emergency, should be recorded on those sheets. Date of call and the name of your employee who took the call must be recorded. Number those sheets, to ensure that unsuccessful phone contacts don’t “disappear”, skewing the numbers. All information you want taken on a call should be included-give me a call or email me if you’d like a free template. If the patient doesn’t schedule, the reason for that needs to be clearly noted. “Insurance Participation”, “Needed Saturday Hours”, “Looking for Oral Surgeon” would be examples.
First- Create a simple log that will be used any time a New Patient actually schedules an appointment. If an appointment was scheduled, it goes on the log, regardless of whether they showed up for the appointment.
Data needed on that log should include the following:
- Date of call
-Patient’s full name
-Dr. the patient was scheduled with (if you have multiple doctors)
-Reason for call (New Patient, Consult, Emergency)
-Did they show?
-Was treatment diagnosed?
-Was that treatment scheduled?
-Did the patient schedule for their first recall appt?
-Who scheduled the initial appointment?
At the end of the month, each and every month, have your reports given to you with this additional information. Have your Team attach all phone sheets used that month to the printed New Patient Monitor. This will give you valuable information. It will tell you who is answering your phone. Are they effective? What barriers are there between you and your prospective patients? Is one of your employees better at discussing Par vs Non-Par insurance issues with your patients? Are the patients firm in their scheduling choice, or did they cancel or no-show? Did they schedule treatment? Did anybody follow-up on that? If they didn’t schedule, did they tell you why?
This is an amazingly effective tool for in-house evaluation, and it will also let you know quite a bit more about the dynamics involved with scheduling the patients you see, as well as the ones you don’t. Low-tech, but far more valuable in my opinion for the doctor, as well as the team. Identify the stars in your team and recognize them- they are the ones you want training the others. Don’t give up on the members of your team whom are unsuccessful on the phone- have them shadow the ones who are stars, and make them stars in their own right!
Click here for a new patient monitor template.
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