If your therapy clinic treats mostly pediatric patients, chances are your business is seasonal. You may have noticed that your busiest or slowest times coincide with the changes in an average student’s schedule. Because of this correlation, back-to-school season (August or September) tends to be either overwhelmingly busy or a time when your therapists get a well-deserved break. At this time of year, parents can be bogged down in the new routine and not ready to commit to regular therapy appointments, or instead want to dive into the new school year head-first and fill up your calendar last-minute.
Not only do your therapists need regular work, but we’re guessing that many of your patients shouldn’t go too long without treatment. The difference between a successful or stressful back-to-school period for your employees and patients alike is thoughtful anticipation. We recommend training your therapists to be conscientious about this trend each year and take some small steps to prioritize the flow of appointments.
Below are our top three suggestions for how to make smooth scheduling achievable at this potentially volatile time of year.
- Talk to parents to encourage consistent scheduling in late summer and leading up to the start of school. Hinting at the upcoming school year in a laid-back manner can simply keep it top of mind for them. To gently nudge families towards scheduling therapy appointments well in advance, you can put up casual signs in your waiting room or offer your therapists incentives for getting patients who have an ongoing need to commit to school-year slots during July or August. Most parents will appreciate an offhand reminder that they need to consider when they’ll have time to bring their child in once school begins.
- Remind families that your calendar will fill up in the fall to encourage early commitment to time slots. If you have a large clinic with an admin staff, build future appointment discussions into your check-in procedure. There are several ways to do this without relying on your front desk staff to remember. For example, add a yes-or-no column to your sign-in sheet asking if patients plan to continue with regular appointments after school starts, or whether they will require a change in appointment time by a certain date. Then, follow up with just those patients who said yes via templated emails or an automated email service. Another approach is to suggest that therapists put up a wall calendar in their treatment rooms showing color-coded slots (taken vs. available) for the next two months. Even just this visual reminder puts a bit of pressure on parents to without being too pushy.
- If a patient’s appointment time will be changing, use TheraPlan’s scheduler to hold those slots in advance. Some patients may be adjusting their regular appointment times (from morning to afternoon, for example) at the start of the fall semester. To do so, you can simply enter a single or recurring appointment for the desired date and time and include a note in the new appointment box, such as ‘Will Confirm on {date}.’ This way, any of your staff who hover over that appointment will see that it is not yet confirmed but will know to touch base with the appropriate therapist before booking anyone else at that time.
Once you’ve gotten most of your patients to acknowledge how they’ll be proceeding with appointments at this transitional time of year, don’t neglect to keep up with the reminders! One of the best ways to interact with busy parents is to show up in front of them on a regular basis and make communication convenient.
TheraPlan’s SMS appointment reminders are the perfect way to do that. The best part is that you don’t have to manage and send these yourself. If you use the calendar feature within our EMR, text reminders will integrate with your schedule and be sent automatically to the patients you select 24 hours prior to their appointment. To see firsthand how this feature can reduce your clinic’s no-shows, schedule a demo with us today.
