Changing Your Schedule

Changing the schedule takes time, effort, and mathematical analysis. It is not something that practices enjoy doing and they often go years without addressing it. This is a mistake. If the daily goal is being missed more often than it is achieved or exceeded, then it is time to reevaluate the schedule, redo the procedural time studies, build new time blocks, and retrain the team in a new scheduling modality.

For example, one practice we worked with was able to increase production by adding an extra time block in the morning and moving smaller morning time blocks to the afternoon. This made it easier to schedule larger cases, and at the same time required a longer timeline to schedule smaller cases that could easily wait an extra week or two. As a result, production increased immediately. Another example was a practice that became more skilled in case presentation, increased the average size of patient cases, and then built a new schedule to accommodate these patients sooner rather than later, increasing production on an indefinite basis.

If in either of these examples the schedule had not changed, the end result would simply be that the while practice had taken steps for improvement, the schedule restricted any opportunity to increase practice production. Practice improvements need to be reflected in the overall schedule, because, as explained above, time management controls all other systems. Always remember that the schedule is the key system for the practice.