Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Clinic Scheduling

I'm thinking about making some changes to my schedule. My appointment slots are 20, 40, and 60 minute options. I'm in Family Medicine, so a full women's wellness with breast, pap, labs, etc will run 60 minutes. Pharyngitis, URI, etc are 20 minutes. I see 14 to 20 patients per day.

Please share your specialty, how many you average per day, and what type of appointment slots you use.

I'm also interested in how many of you are using or sharing templates. I've crafted dozens of what I consider high quality templates that I'm always tweaking to improve.

15 min slots, I see 26-30 a day, physicals 30 min

Hi Chris,

Pediatrics.

We have 15 minute slots, which can be used in multiples of those. Most appointments are 15 minutes. Acutes, established wcc, med checks, etc. First time well child, especially newborns are 30 minutes. Generally, abdominal pain will be 30 minutes. It's hard to know, which is why I NEVER say anything to my staff about "Why did you only give me 15 minutes for chest pain (never the heart in peds, but you have to spend time with the parents anyway).

I see about 20 to 25 a day. I get behind at times on a wcc w/extras or an appointment I didn't think would take that long. But, I give as much time as each patient needs. But, I generally make it up on med checks and conjunctivitis. I can see an ADHD med check in around seven minutes or less, and when we printed the scripts, it could be a three minute appointment. But, my CMA always preps the ADHD meds before I get in the room, so its just a blood pressure, a few questions, and EPCS. They are the same about 80% of the time, and if they have been prepped it is a 95% guarantee that everything is fine. There are times I see four med checks in a row in about 20 minutes, which is nice.

Since I am on the subject, we see benzodiazepine, opioid and stimulant patients every three months. Pain patients always take longer as I am always looking to wean them down. Benzos the same. But, ADHD meds are rather straightforward. Sometimes a patient here for check on Vyvanse in am and Adderall at noon will wait for an hour, and the appointment is then five minutes. I usually say something like, I feel bad, because you waited 45 minutes, and now I will only spend five minutes. 99% are ecstatic to hear that. We have a couple of patients who will ask why they have to come all the way in when you can just send it via the Internet. I will look right at them and say, 1) the DEA requires it (which they don't), and I don't manage your son's ADHD for free.

By the way, Chris, your templates sound awesome. I wonder if you will be able to incorporate them into the new templates in 10.1.

Thanks for the detailed response Bert. It sounds like your ADD visit would be a good candidate for a full visit template as they are proposing.

We use 2 columns for appointments - one for sick, one for physicals. (There is only 1 doctor here but I made a dummy provider to make the 2nd schedule.)

The slots are set at 15 minutes. I block every other slot in the physicals column so that we have 1 physical every 30 minutes. However, there are additional blocked slots throughout the day. This is labor intensive to do (we block the schedule in administrator settings) but it's the only way I've found that will create a good flow in the schedule w/o being too overbooked or underbooked. And I'm still tinkering with it!

We generally have about 4 no shows per week and see about 25 patients per day.

Serene, how did you make a 'dummy provider' for scheduling purposes? I need another column