Finding the Perfect Health Care Clinic

Adapting Your Health Clinic To Same-Day Appointments

These days, there is a lot of demand for same-day appointments in many fields of medicine. If you own and operate a medical clinic, adding same-day appointments can go a long way towards bringing you more business and satisfying clients' needs. However, adapting to this setup where you don't know who is coming in until the last minute is not always easy.

Here are some tips to ease the transition and help you make the switch.

Offer a limited number of same-day appointments at first

Switching from book-ahead to same-day appointments only may be too much of a change to take on. Your staff will have an easier time adapting if you only offer a few same-day appointments at first. Clients who prefer to book ahead or are used to booking ahead will also appreciate this partial change. You could start by setting aside time in the schedule for just 10 same-day appointments at first. See how that goes, how many end up being booked, and how many other potential clients you have to turn away from these appointments. Go from there, adding more appointments if you are able.

Make sure all staff are aware of appointments as they come in

Set up a system that alerts all of your staff when a new same-day appointment has been booked. This could be an automatic email that gets sent to everyone. Or, in a smaller clinic, your receptionist could just let everyone know when someone books. Staff members tend to work together, so even those who will not be directly involved in the appointment will enjoy knowing what's coming down the pipe.

Consider only booking same-day visits for existing clients

Taking new client information and having them fill out all of the paperwork is a time-consuming process. If you think that doing this for numerous same-day patients will be too much for your staff, you can try limiting these appointments to patients you've seen before. Getting them in and out will be a more streamlined process since you'll already have their insurance information, health history, and contact info. Over time, as your staff adapts to same-day appointments, you can consider opening them up to new clients.

Same-day appointments are in high demand in many fields of medicine. If you follow the tips above, you should be able to offer them without too much hassle. Keep your staff in the loop, and rely on their feedback along the way.