No matter what your business, efficiency is a buzzword in improving customer service and staff satisfaction and in reducing costs and overheads. This is especially important in a medical practice environment. The sheer mass of information stored and required means any lull in efficiency will lead to increased waiting times and staff and patient frustrations. But just how do you increase efficiency effectively?
1. Utilize Your Staff Properly
While no boss likes to see his staff sitting around doing nothing, any optician knows that at other times those same staff will all be busy. Reducing your staff count might not be an option or be wise. A certain number of hands are always required to cover sickness and holidays.
The answer here is to ensure each member of your staff has a specific function and that these functions cross over as little as possible. While several members of staff might be able to receive and process patient data, make sure auxiliary tasks like being responsible for managing your cleaning service only falls to one person and a back-up.
Having multiple staff members ‘checking’ something has been done or asking each other if it has been done eats into time and reduces efficiency.
- The right equipment
Make sure you have the right equipment in place for the staff to be able to do their job properly. This could include, desks, computers, storage and off course a quality selection of Operator Chairs which can be found on sites similar to bestbuy-officechairs.co.uk/office-chairs/operator-chairs/ for them to sit on whilst checking customers eyes.
- Use a Specialised IT System
Probably the easiest and most effective way to improve efficiency is to ensure your practice is using the right optician management software. It makes no sense to struggle along using Office and various different platforms to accommodate your needs when there are other options on the market. You need a system that can incorporate everything from patient recalls and the practice diary to medical history information all in one place.
Efficiency usually increases when staff know where to find data and lab information, and with systems such as this they do. There are also advantages to having the examination module and dispensing information side by side.
3. Offer Patients an Online Option
These days, many offices text or email their patients to remind them of their upcoming appointment. When doing this, consider forwarding your patients all the forms they need to fill out ahead of time. They can return it to you by email, and you can print it and they can sign it in the office.
