Easy Fix for the Number One Front Desk Flaw
At BrinsonAnderson Consulting, our goal is to help your practice become more efficient. We pride ourselves on out-of-the-box thinking to deliver simple, effective process overhauls to improve your productivity, bottom line, and quality of life. With any new consult, one of the first places that we look to enhance is your front desk. This is because we have learned, through our 25+ years in practice, that the front desk is, more often than not, a problem area. So, here are some things to think about when it comes to your front desk as well as an easy fix for the number one front desk flaw.
Does Your Front Desk Positively Reflect Your Practice?
Wooing a new patient is kind of like dating. Your website is basically your profile picture. You want it to be enticing enough to get a patient to “swipe right” and schedule a consultation. But the front desk is the real first impression. It’s that coffee date that you hope to turn into dinner. This is why it is so important that your front desk and waiting room be a positive representation of your practice. If a new patient comes in, and he or she is left standing there, ignored, while the receptionist juggles 5 phone lines while also trying to scan an insurance card, that does not bode well for dinner. Everyone wants to be seen, heard, and valued. So, improving efficiency at the front desk will help ensure that a patient’s first impression is as positive as possible.
Number One Front Desk Flaw
The number one front desk flaw that we see again, and again, and again, is piling too many duties on to this one area. It is not uncommon for a front desk to handle:
Answering phones
Checking in patients
Verifying insurance
Scanning documents
Collecting co-pays
Making & receiving referrals
Scheduling tests
Checking out patients
Collecting payment
Ordering lunch for the office
Accepting deliveries
Just writing out that list is making our head spin. Even Wonder Woman might have a hard time handling that many different functions with 100% accuracy. This is when it is time to implement what we like to call “divide and conquer”.
Divide & Conquer
The core of our “divide and conquer” strategy starts with taking the responsibility for answering the phones away from the front desk. This allows the person who is greeting your incoming patient to devote her full attention to making that person feel welcome. If your practice is large enough, we recommend creating a call center to handle the phones, manage referrals, and schedule appointments. We will work with you to set up a flexible schedule for staff to move between the front desk and the call center depending on your peak patient hours and phone hours.
In small or solo practices that perhaps don’t have the staff for a dedicated call center, it is still relatively easy to assign someone to be the primary phone operator on busy clinic days. This could be a PRN staff that comes in on high call volume days, your office manager, or your surgery coordinator. Since each practice has its own unique staffing dynamics, we will work with you to help identify the best person for the job because taking the phones away from the front desk is the best way to ensure that the person at the front desk can do her number one job which is to make certain that every patient who walks through your door feels valued.
To find out more about how BrinsonAnderson Consulting can help you improve your front desk and practice efficiency, for a predictable monthly fee, contact us here.
