It’s no secret that many medical offices often have clients sitting in their waiting rooms for long periods of time. Not only can long wait times sometimes create a negative experience for clients, they can result in medical offices losing valuable business as well. In addition, clients who experience long wait times may even take to public online reviewing websites to leave less-than-flattering reviews about the medical office in question. Thus, Medical Office Administrators (MOAs) who use their professional training to implement strategies that work to reduce the amount of time a client spends sitting in the waiting room will help make a lasting positive impact.
If you’re interested in becoming a Medical Office Administrator, keep reading to discover three useful strategies that can help improve medical office wait times during your career.
Record Office Communications to Avoid Confusion after MOA Training
When it comes to improving efficiencies and reducing client wait times, ensuring communication is accurate and timely is one of the most important steps that professionals with MOA training can take. For years, many medical professionals and doctors have relied on verbal communication with nurses and other office staff to get tasks completed. However, verbal communication leaves room for miscommunication, misunderstandings, and forgetfulness.
Writing information down or recording it digitally is an efficient way to improve inter-office communication and ensure no information is lost in translation. To help the office run even smoother, preformatted forms with check boxes and lists can be used, making it easy for doctors to quickly indicate what they need completed by nurses, MOAs, and other office support staff.
Tell Clients Exactly When to Arrive for Appointments
Clients arriving late or not showing up for appointments at all are challenging factors for medical offices looking to reduce their wait times. There are several ways that you can implement strategies to overcome this after your medical office administration course. The first is to call to confirm upcoming appointments with clients approximately 48 hours in advance. Not only will it remind the client of the appointment, it will ensure the MOA receives enough notice if the client wishes to cancel or reschedule their appointment.
In addition to calling to confirm appointments, another practice that can help streamline efficiencies is telling clients exactly when to arrive for their appointment. Some clients will purposely arrive late if they expect there to be a long waiting time. However, it’s important for clients to arrive early so that they can ensure their medical information is up to date.
When booking an appointment for a client, tell them exactly how early to arrive before their appointment. Once the client arrives, you can get them started by asking them to fill out the necessary paperwork and update their current medications list. This way, the doctor doesn’t have to spend time asking questions about information that the client already provided.
Keep Supplies Well Stocked and Organized after MOA Training
It’s not uncommon for there to be one doctor working in a medical office at a single time. Because of this, the doctors’ time is limited and therefore, very valuable. It’s inefficient for doctors to leave clients sitting in an examination room to go look for supplies because the items they need weren’t stocked or readily available. MOAs can help ensure this doesn’t happen by keeping all supplies fully stocked, organized, and easy to find.
In addition, MOAs can work with office management to implement an efficient system for signalling when supplies may be getting low. A doctor could leave an empty package of gauze in a designated box, for example, that lets the MOA know that that examination room needs gauze to be restocked.
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