Our daily schedule is a critical component of our productivity. An orthodontic office runs a series of different procedures throughout the day and tries to navigate the fact patients love to come in after school hours and before work. How do we best fit exams, bondings, debonds, adjustments, retainer checks, and the comfort visits that fill our days? It is often like the game Tetris, fitting pieces into the limits of the hours you wish to work. Ultimately, the schedule needs to maximize the team’s time, address patient needs, and properly manage doctor time.
Simplify the appointment types
We build our appointment templates to accommodate several different types of procedures. We use 10-minute units of time to make appointment types. What invariably happens to these templates is that we place 1 unit, 2 unit, 3 unit, 4 unit, 6 unit, 9 unit appointments. These permutations turn the schedule into a complex maze. Instead, add interchangeability to the procedures and reduce the options. I like to reduce my appointment types to 2 unit (20 min) and 4 unit (40 min) appointments in my schedule. We narrow the choices and build efficiencies, so we perform short procedures in 20 minutes and longer procedures in 40 minutes. The 20:40 options allow for interchangeability amongst appointments. If you feel you need more time for your pace, consider a 30:60 set of possibilities.
Reduce the number of appointment codes
How many different appointment codes do you have in place? Too many options only confuse and add complexity. Simplify the choice into basic groups and reduce the number of options, making it easier and simpler to manage. A great way to simplify a process is by removing choices. When we reduce the categories of appointments, it becomes easier to communicate between the scheduling team and the clinic. It is also easier to choose amongst shorter lists. At least once a year, we print out the list of appointment codes and remove dated or redundant choices. Seeing a stack of pages worth of codes makes the complexity of the problem much more tangible. Purging the list is a great project for gaining efficiency.
Compress the appointment
To maximize efficiency, we work to streamline each appointment. The first step in this process would be to measure how long you take per procedure. Timing with a stopwatch app can record average times per doctor and per assistant. Have your clinical lead record and determine an average time. Then set a goal on how long you want to compress the time per procedure. For example, if a process takes 60 minutes, how can you shorten it to 40 minutes? We could preload attachment templates, setup fixed appliances ahead of time, use prepasted brackets, cut out unnecessary steps, etc. The aim is to simplify the process so we can achieve more in less time.
Standardize delivery of information
Many orthodontic appointments require team members to educate patients on critical requirements in treatment. For example, we provide oral hygiene instructions after we bond appliances to prevent issues that can cause white spot lesions or caries. When we deliver the first set of aligners, we instruct the patients on use, care, and compliance. Checklists can support clinical assistants to ensure proper explanations and help you run more efficiently. We have found pre-recorded videos to be extremely effective in delivering consistent information in a high-quality format. We load these videos onto our YouTube platform. The videos allow us to delegate the instructions so the patient can watch it from an iPad chairside and enable the patient to review it after the appointment as needed.
