Clinic

[Primate]

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Was anyone concerned that having only 6 minutes per patient in clinic would be too short a time with each? Said another way, how do y'all view the high volume/rate that seems required in ophtho clinic?

How much of the routine part of the visit can office staff take care of? In private practice, does it pay to hire professionals to do a larger portion of the triage in order to generate a higher surgical volume? I've only seen the academic environment, which is somewhat different (though still pretty tight on time).

Thanks.

 

[Andrew_Doan]

Originally posted by Primate
Was anyone concerned that having only 6 minutes per patient in clinic would be too short a time with each? Said another way, how do y'all view the high volume/rate that seems required in ophtho clinic?

Where do you get this number? At Iowa, the attending sees about 30-40 patients in an 8 hour day. That's 4-5 patients/hour or 12-15 min/patient.

If you spend time with Dr. Ed Stone, then he spends 15-30 minutes/patient. However, he will spend 1 hour with new patients.

This guy is amazing:
http://webeye.ophth.uiowa.edu/dept/BIOGRAPH/stone.htm

 

[Primate]

These numbers are admittedly at the extreme end - based on a couple residents who've been looking in private practices with ~60 (again, that's max) patients/day scheduled. Figure a 10 hour day, time for admin, notes, letters to referring docs, lunch (allow 5 minutes for this one), etc. and you can see how one might only spend 6 minutes on average with a patient. Note, that might not be spending 6 minutes ON a patient, just WITH one. You might have more like 10 minutes total to get all the above done. Still seems a heck of a rush.

 

[Andrew_Doan]

Originally posted by Primate
These numbers are admittedly at the extreme end - based on a couple residents who've been looking in private practices with ~60 (again, that's max) patients/day scheduled. Figure a 10 hour day, time for admin, notes, letters to referring docs, lunch (allow 5 minutes for this one), etc. and you can see how one might only spend 6 minutes on average with a patient. Note, that might not be spending 6 minutes ON a patient, just WITH one. You might have more like 10 minutes total to get all the above done. Still seems a heck of a rush.

Most private practices start you out slow at ~25 patients/day and then builds to 40-50 patients/day.

If you have 60 patients and most are known return patients, then it's a fast 5 minute visit.

 

[ckyuen]

Remember seeing that many patients is not the norm. I also equates to someone who is probably making like 500,000 a year. If you see about 25-30 a day you will be just fine. throw in some prps, focals, hvf's and you can see how you will be doing quite well. Not many people can see 60 a day so don't worry about it. Yes your staff will do a lot of the work, refractions, ctl fittings, scribs. I know a couple of guys in town here who see about 15-17 an hour, they have about 8 lanes each, and a lot of techs. It will be difficult to generate 60 visits a day so dont worry about it, you will have to market yourself hard to get that many patients. I can tell you at this point 2nd year of optho. I can comfortably see about 30 patients a day with about 6 laser procedures, doing all my own refractions (streaking patients or old glasses), and booking and doing all my own surgery scheduling and preop h&ps, a's k's. Sure some patients take 20-30 minutes but some only take 2-3. This would require about one tech on my part and one clerical person. If I had more support staff I could easily see more patients.