It may seem like your days feel rushed, unpredictable, and exhausting because you’re too busy, but the problem may actually lie with your schedule. If it’s not designed properly and you’re merely reacting throughout the day, you, your team, and even your patients will feel the stress. That chaos will erode morale and ultimately impact your profitability negatively, so eliminating it is critical.
It’s common to blame schedule challenges on people, but the truth is that you need to design a better schedule!
Design the Schedule Around a Target, Not Hope
Instead of hoping your schedule will feel the way you want, you need to start with your daily production target and then work backwards:
- Determine your annual production goal
- Break it down into a daily PPD target
- Factor in your effort gap to ensure you have enough net production to sustain your revenue goals
You want to balance the highs and lows of production over time, and by planning your days to a goal, you’re able to create predictability.
Focus on Your Wants First, Then Patient Needs
This is a step that a lot of people miss, but since you have the freedom to design the schedule, you need to design one that ensures you’re working at your best. If you think about it, there are particular times of day when you work better, and your schedule should reflect that. Ask yourself:
- When do I do my best clinical work?
- What procedures drain me?
- What procedures energize me?
- How many days do I want to work?
If you hate your schedule, you’re not going to have a healthy practice, so focus on yourself first, and let your patients work with your schedule.
Create Blocks That Protect Flow, Profit, and Patient Access
Kirk often says that “Time is the new rich,” so protecting that time is crucial. This is where block scheduling comes into play, because it lets you intentionally allocate your time:
- Allocate your high production blocks first and make sure they’re placed at times when you perform your best
- Avoid allowing lower-value procedures to fragment your most productive hours
- Intentionally plan for priority patient needs and emergencies
Remember, your schedule is a reflection of your values, so build it in a way that protects them.
If your practice feels increasingly rushed and unpredictable, examine the last two weeks of your schedule:
- How many days did you hit your production goal?
- How many of those days felt smooth, focused, and in control?
If your answer is “not many,” then it’s not a busyness problem — it’s a design problem, so it’s time to get to work! Creating an intentional schedule may feel like a challenge at first, but bit by bit, you’re going to make progress and see how much better everything is.
To learn more about ACT and how we can help you build a Better Practice and a Better Life, reach out to Gina!
Tune in next time and learn how to embrace constructive conflict!
