The Importance of Staying on Time

Patients will respect your time in direct proportion to the way that you respect theirs. So staying on time each and every day is a must. And while staying on time requires a team effort from all staff members, the doctor bears the ultimate responsibility.

The biggest contributing factor I see to messing up a perfectly scheduled day is when the doctor decides to perform definitive therapy for  an emergency patient. The doctor must resist that temptation. Treat emergencies as emergencies by offering treatment to relieve pain. Placement of a temporary filling, writing a prescription, making a referral to a specialist, taking a tooth out of hyper-occlusion – whatever it takes. That is your responsibility when an emergency patient is squeezed into your busy day. The mission is to spend no more than ten minutes getting someone comfortable, and then getting them re-scheduled for the proper amount of time on another day for definitive treatment.

Once you have kept someone waiting more than ten to fifteen minutes in your reception area or even worse in a treatment room with a saliva ejector hanging out of their mouth, they begin counting up your faults. Don’t give them that opportunity. Don’t be greedy. Take perfect care of your scheduled patients. That is how you stay on time.