Our practice sees patients from 7:00am to 6:00pm
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and 7:00am to
noon on Wednesday and 9:00 to noon on Sat. We
have two DPMs, so we schedule one doc from
7:00am to 3:00pm and the other from 11:00am to
6:00pm. Times with highest patient demand are
7:00 to 9:00am and 3:30 to 6:00pm, so we do not
schedule any "routine care" patients during
these times. 11:30am to 1:30pm are also fairly
busy with lunch hour patients. Wednesday is our
slowest day(partly because our strappings are
done twice a week). If we wanted a shorter work
week, we would probably close on Wednesdays.
Fridays are our busiest and most productive
days. They are our highest use days for office
surgeries because patients can have small
procedures like P & As, exostectomies,
cryosurgeries for neuromas, MIS fasciotomies,
etc and return to work on Monday. They are also
busy because patients want to have their sore
feet 'fixed" before the weekend. Fridays would
be our LAST choice of a day to close! Sat.AM
has our highest percentage of new patients.
Staff do not work more than 8 hours a day, DPMs
do not work more than 35 hours/week.
An interesting note is that we used to open at
8:00am and staff suggested at one of our annual
goal planning meetings that we begin seeing
patients at 7:00am because they noted that the
period form 8:00 to 9:00 was always
overscheduled. These are often very productive
patients because they are children or working
folks with expectations of quality, convenient
care and willingness and ability to pay for it!
Staff was right as usual!
Our practice is only 30% Medicare. I suspect if
you have a high percentage of Medicare/senior
patients, closing on Friday would have a lesser
effect on your practice.
Kathleen Neuhoff, DPM, South Bend, IN,
vetpod@aol.com
