*this blog was originally published on 11/19/2020 and has been updated for clarity.
As traffic to your clinic increases with the onset of flu season and holiday travel, there is an increased demand for appointments. In recent years, the Urgent Care industry has been receiving unprecedented patient volumes, leading to outrageous wait times and lower patient satisfaction ratings.
What can you do as your staff works around the clock to meet the needs of your community? How can you maximize your clinic's efficiency while simultaneously lowering wait times?
Provide enough availability for all patients to schedule online
Online scheduling allows patients to book visits online, anytime. This saves patients from having to wait all night for the clinic to open, time on hold, and going back and forth with the front desk staff to find a time where schedules align to schedule a visit.
Online scheduling frees up time for your office staff to spend on providing high-value customer service to patients who are waiting for their appointments.
Online booking is just like making a restaurant reservation through OpenTable—just a few taps and the visit is confirmed.
Solv’s recent patient survey found that 67% of patients prefer to book online.
With 1 billion searches taking place every day on Google for healthcare-related topics, and over 10 million monthly users to Solv’s site every month, we are the consumer destination for finding high-quality convenient care services.
Providing real-time appointment availability allows last-minute open appointments to be filled. Solv’s AI queuing also allows online availability to automatically be blocked out if the clinic is running behind, and opens slots back up if the clinic is running ahead of schedule to maximize appointment availability and revenue.
In addition to attracting new patients, online scheduling through Solv helps you collect information from patients prior to their arrival. Collect patient demographics, government-issued photo ID, insurance information, registration forms, and consent forms before the patient arrives so insurance eligibility is complete prior to arrival and their covered services are verified before the visit begins.
During high-volume times, you might feel the knee-jerk reaction to disable online reservations. However, disabling online reservations does more harm than good. Patients know that they want to visit your clinic—instead of booking in a few hours or tomorrow, they will walk into your clinic and overwhelm your staff.
Increasing online availability will allow patients to select less busy times in your schedule to load-balance and will result in a less stressed staff and happier patients who have short wait times.
Truly evaluate your current patient throughput and provider count. Consider if you are able to hire more seasonal staff to effectively manage the higher patient volume so that you do not need to turn patients away when they come to you for care.
Realistically compare the total patients you are able to see based on every day of the week to find your throughput. Throughput may vary by day and depend on whether you have a faster or slower provider.
Leverage Solv's AI queuing to manage walk-in and book ahead patients
AI-powered scheduling and queuing systems monitor your waitlist and clinic throughput and optimize your wait time estimates, booking availability, and overall pacing to keep the clinic operating smoothly.
How Solv’s AI Queuing Works For Online Bookings
With AI-queuing, patients booking online are ensured accurate time slots that fully account for the walk-in activity and throughput that is happening within the clinic in real-time. This allows the clinic to uphold the service promise made to each patient.
Additionally, the clinic staff is able to send secure messages to these patients before they arrive to inform them of any changes to the schedule, or even invite them earlier.
How Solv’s AI Queuing Works For Walk-Ins
Patients walking into a clinic using AI-queuing are generally provided a more accurate wait time estimate that seamlessly accounts for any online bookings, as well as the clinic’s current pacing.
When the online bookings are spaced further apart during busy times, this usually results in shorter waits. And the clear and timely messaging support from the clinic staff allows proactive communications to update patients and even allow them to wait in their car.
How Solv’s AI Queuing Works For Clinic Staff
Within the clinic itself, AI-queuing alleviates tedious work from the front desk staff, like removing and adding available visit times for online bookings (or risk missing out on patients!)
Staff is also generally more pleasant as their workloads are naturally smoothed throughout the day. They have reduced preventable patient spikes, and are able to set clear expectations and give timely communication to patients.
Use reporting tools to identify bottlenecks
Use the Solv Clinic Report to find the average times that patients are spending completing their paperwork, waiting for an exam room to become available, and time spent in the exam room. This report helps you highlight bottlenecks in the patient experience at your clinic.
If patients are spending a long time completing their paperwork, consider consolidating or synthesizing your paperwork to only ask for necessary information.
If patients are spending a long time waiting for an exam room to become available, consider cleaning out the exam room currently being used for storage so that it can be used.
If patients are spending a long time in the exam room, then consider whether a provider can be encouraged to continue providing thorough care, but perhaps provide less personal anecdotes while they treat the patient for their chief complaint.
Create a streamlined patient intake process
Inefficient registration processes become increasingly painful when patient volumes are high. Patients are faced with stressed-out staff, experience long wait times, and generally leave lower reviews even if they liked the provider and received high-quality care.
This is concerning when considering that 71% of patients use online reviews as the first step in finding care.
Solv partners have found great success in streamlining their registration process by providing patients with contactless mobile check-in.
Patients can digitally check into their visit upon their arrival and upload their insurance card, payment information, and photo ID without having to physically share these items with the front desk staff.
Maintain consistent patient communications
69% of patients would prefer an unfamiliar number to contact them via text rather than a phone call. You should message patients in real-time to inform them of updates before, during, and after their visit.
Gone are the days when patients answer phone calls from unknown numbers.
If the patient has uploaded an inactive insurance card, you can request they bring a new card to the visit by sending the patient a quick SMS message.
If a provider is running late and a patient is waiting in their car and not the waiting room, let the patient know that it’ll just be 5 more minutes, and then send a subsequent message when it’s her turn to enter the waiting room to be taken to the exam room and be seen.
After the visit, let the patient know that her test results are ready and to give you a call to discuss.
Quick, clear messages from the practice save your staff time by not requiring long hold times and leaving countless messages on voicemail machines.
Braving the storm of high patient volumes this holiday season can seem daunting, but with a few simple steps to streamline your clinic operations, you will be able to see more patients and gain their loyalty for life. Check out these tactical ways you can enhance your workflows today to deliver the best possible care while reducing staff burnout.
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