A Successful Tip for your Practice
Medical practices waste an enormous amount of time and energy every day by failing to address patients' real agendas during their office visits. For example, a patient may come in to the office for a diabetes follow-up visit and forget to ask for a needed medication refill. Or a patient may not reveal his or her main health concern until the visit time has nearly ended. The results of these situations are unnecessary telephone calls to the practice, frustrated patients with unresolved health concerns and overworked physicians and medical staff.
The form has three brief sections. First, it asks patients to list the "main reason for today's visit." This is not always the reason they give to the scheduler when they call to make their appointment. Second, the form asks patients to list "other concerns I would like to ask if there is time." Since most patients do have additional concerns, it is valuable to solicit this information up front, rather than waiting for the patient to announce, "Oh, by the way, I've been having some migraines" as the visit is about to end. Finally, the form offers a checklist of things patients might need but commonly forget to ask about: prescription refills, work or school excuses, referrals needed for insurance purposes and various forms that need to be completed.
Practices can add a variety of items to the checklist and personalize it to their own special interests or to the needs of their patient population. For example, since your practice is interested in not only the physical but also the spiritual dimension of your patients' lives, we include "I would appreciate prayer today" as an item on your checklist. An amazing number of patients check this option, and we have aides, nurses and physicians ready to provide this service. Other items practices could add to their checklist might include the need for smoking cessation counseling, immunizations, mole checks or medication instruction.
The solution
To address this problem, we suggest a "today's visit" form (see below) that helps patients focus on what they really want from their physician at the current visit and reminds them of items patients often forget until after they have left the office. We ask all patients to fill out the form when they come into our waiting room, and it takes just a few minutes of their time. You should give them the form on a clipboard with an attached pen, making it easy for them to complete.
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Practices can add a variety of items to the checklist and personalize it to their own special interests or to the needs of their patient population. For example, since your practice is interested in not only the physical but also the spiritual dimension of your patients' lives, we include "I would appreciate prayer today" as an item on your checklist. An amazing number of patients check this option, and we have aides, nurses and physicians ready to provide this service. Other items practices could add to their checklist might include the need for smoking cessation counseling, immunizations, mole checks or medication instruction.
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The benefits
The "today's visit" checklist has helped many practices immensely. As physicians enter the exam room, they simply glance at the today's visit form (which the patient has already completed and the nurse has collected) and can see the patient's full agenda without having to spend precious visit time uncovering these issues. The form can also help eliminate many unnecessary phone calls to your office from patients who forgot to raise a concern while with their physician. Most important, it can help meet your patients' real needs more efficiently
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