12 Scheduling Best Practices for Rehab Therapists

Anyone who’s ever handled scheduling in the healthcare industry knows that it’s no easy feat. It’s so much more than simply matching a patient to any available provider. There are several moving pieces involved and factors to consider when building a solid schedule. 

In healthcare, dropping the ball anywhere along the scheduling process isn’t just a mere nuisance, it  can even negatively affect patient outcomes if it results in care delays. In fact, one survey found that 61% of patients say they’ve avoided medical care because of scheduling hassles. 

Therefore, since proper scheduling is tied to better patient satisfaction and a healthier community, you may want to update scheduling at your clinic. But what can you do to streamline and optimize the process? To help you along, we’ve developed 12 patient scheduling best practices. 

So, without further ado, let’s explore what scheduling strategies you can implement to propel your organization forward. 

12 Best Rehab Therapy Scheduling Tips

1. Draft the Schedule in Advance 

While “winging it” might work for some things, scheduling patients and therapists isn’t one of them. By planning ahead, you can better align your business needs with patient demand. For instance, patient volume and provider availability will likely differ during holidays and busier seasons. Although this is occasionally overlooked, weather conditions are also something to keep in mind, as something like heavy snow may lead to cancellations or late arrivals.  

When you take a proactive approach, you give yourself sufficient time to address potential scheduling conflicts, like double-booking or overlapping appointments. It also gives you an opportunity to catch any coverage gaps. 

Planning in advance (think two to four weeks) permits proper work allocation and operational efficiency. Even if there are some last-minute changes, drafting a schedule gives you more time to navigate these shifts.  

2. Determine Therapists’ Availability

It’s ideal to know therapists’ availability before you begin creating a schedule. Learning their schedule after the fact might mean re-doing work you’ve already done. One way to quickly capture this information without adding more work to your plate is to utilize a scheduling tool. By doing this, therapists can easily update their availability, blocking off time when they’re not free to work. 

This approach works incredibly well if you encourage them to submit this information a few weeks in advance. For instance, if several physical therapists plan to take time off the upcomin month, you have enough time to figure out how to meet your patient’s needs. After all, the last thing you want to deal with is understaffing, which can lead to lower quality of care, medical errors, and more. At the same time, you want to avoid overstaffing, which increases operational costs and reduces productivity. 

3. Implement Centralized Scheduling 

Patient scheduling includes various touchpoints, especially if you’re working in an organization with multiple locations and several providers. This is further convoluted if nearly every department uses a different scheduler or follows decentralized scheduling practices. 

While this method allows departments to tailor schedules to their own unique needs, it doesn’t ensure a consistent patient experience across the board. Therefore, we recommend centralized scheduling. 

This model utilizes one scheduling system to handle all patient appointments, creating more coordinated staff scheduling and streamlined processes. A study on centralized nursing staff scheduling found that this approach improved labor productivity, led to less staff reassignment, and enhanced satisfaction.  

4. Identify Provider Capabilities and Preferences

Do any of your therapists specialize or excel in certain areas? For instance, maybe you have a physical therapist who works well with patients presenting with sports injuries.

When you schedule providers with the patient populations they serve best, you’ll likely see improved patient outcomes and satisfaction. This may also drive productivity as you’re maximizing providers’ strengths. While this isn’t always true, people who excel in certain areas often really enjoy what they do. Therefore, don’t hesitate to ask providers and consider their preferences regarding if they have a niche they’d like to work in.  

One study explained, “When employees are enthusiastic and motivated to accomplish their jobs, their performance is likely to improve, contributing to increased productivity.” We’re sure this also applies to contractors, so make a point to identify your team’s strengths and weaknesses. This can be done by: 

• Reviewing patient data 
• Looking at patient feedback
• Asking each therapist to complete a self-assessment that identifies their interests 

5. Permit Patient Self-Scheduling

Gone are the days when patients only scheduled appointments by calling their provider’s office and checking what was available. Today, practices can utilize cloud-based EMR software with patient scheduling capabilities so their patients can book appointments on their own. This frees up time for your administrative staff to focus on other initiatives. 

You can also establish parameters for patients to request an appointment, stipulating that someone on your team has to approve it. This still allows your organization to control the scheduling process, but it cuts out the potential back-and-forth phone calls trying to figure out when the patient is available. 

The system can be set up in such a way that patients can: 

• Select what type of appointment they want (e.g., primary care, vaccinations, return visit, etc.) 
• Determine which location they prefer (if you have multiple sites)
• Pick their preferred dates and times
• Enter any concerns they’d like addressed at the visit 

Once the request is submitted, your team can review this information and decide what works best based on provider availability. 

6. Don’t Forget Appointment Reminders

Missed appointments can’t be avoided entirely, but there are things you can do to help reduce no-shows. One such patient scheduling best practice is to send automated reminders via email and text. 

Some tools even have automated patient reminder phone calls. These can be helpful, as they can detect whether the call has gone to voicemail or was answered by a live person. Based on the occurrence, it’ll play the appropriate message for the intended party. 

Whichever scheduling tool you use, pick one that will allow you to select the frequency of reminders. Many healthcare organizations send a reminder 24 hours before the appointment, but it’s not uncommon to send one a week before, either. Also, these reminders aren’t just for patients, they can be sent to your staff as well. 

7. Require Patient Confirmation

In addition to sending reminders, some companies require that patients confirm their appointment 24 to 48 hours beforehand. They may use a tool to send an auto text message asking the patient to text one to confirm their appointment or two to cancel or reschedule. 

If the patient indicates via text that they need to cancel, a staff member can then call them to assess the reason and work with them to reschedule. This also allows your staff to contact other patients who might be on a waitlist. As a result, cancellations that otherwise would’ve been lost revenue have the potential to be recaptured. 

However, it’s also important to note that this may not work for all patient populations. Older populations might not reliably respond to text or email reminders, for example. Therefore, be sure to assess whether or not this could be successfully implemented at your company. 

8. Implement Telemedicine to Capture Gaps

If your schedule is overflowing with in-person visits and you don’t have the physical space to accommodate them, could some of those patients be seen by virtual visits instead? Probably so.

Telehealth for physical therapy (PT), for instance, is still considered effective. It offers greater scheduling flexibility and can help decrease staff burnout. It’s an especially helpful solution for patients with barriers to care, such as transportation, which caused 5.8 million people to delay medical care in 2017. 

Tele-PT could include appointments that address the following: 

• Lower back pain
• Sports injuries
• Functional movement screenings
• Balance assessments
• Home safety evaluations
• School-based therapy 

9. Factor in Buffer Time 

Occasionally called “padding time” or “cushion time,” buffer time refers to the intentional allocation of extra time in your schedule to accommodate unforeseen obstacles. Some practices add this time in before or after appointments, say 15 minutes or so. Others might block off a certain timeframe on certain days, such as an hour in the morning or at the end of the scheduled day. Regardless of how you choose to do it, this “additional” time is meant to help you better meet patient demands.

In a perfect world, everyone would arrive and leave on time, but that’s not reality. There are situations where individuals may need same-day appointments or arrive 10 minutes late, and you want to be able to adjust to such hiccups without throwing off the entire schedule. 

10. Geographical Considerations 

If some of your providers visit patients at their homes or skilled nursing facilities, make sure you’re scheduling efficiently. After all, the last thing you want to do is create a workload where providers spend more time driving than seeing patients. 

To help with this, schedule with geography in mind. For example, if there are several appointments on the west side of town, try to schedule them all for the same therapist on the same day. You could even arrange specific days for those appointments, like Mondays and Wednesdays for patients on the west side. 

This makes more sense than the provider driving to an appointment on the west side at 10 AM, heading to the east side of town for an 11:15 AM appointment, and then returning to the west side at 12:30 PM for another booking. Situations like this may cause providers to miss and rush essential care tasks, which can endanger patient health. 

11. Priority-based Scheduling 

Although all patients should be seen, not all need to be seen right away, which is where priority-based scheduling comes in. This approach assigns different wait times to different patients based on their acuity level or the needs associated with various conditions. When it works, you can prioritize and manage patient scheduling to ensure critical cases receive immediate attention.

However, priority-based scheduling has its challenges. It’s a mathematical model, so it could be unreliable if inadequate information on variation in capacity or demand is added. 

12. Enforce Proper Waitlist Management

Some providers are booked out months in advance, making it difficult for new and existing patients to be seen. If this sounds like your practice, and you don’t have a waitlist, it may be time to get one. Figure out different touchpoints where patients can add themselves to your waitlist. This might be when they book online or via their appointment confirmation emails and texts. 

Also, be sure to create a policy that instructs staff on what to do when cancellations occur. These policies should dictate how many patients should be initially contacted and how much time should go by before staff reach out to others.   

Patient Scheduling Best Practices for Rehab Therapists 

It’s true that even the most robust scheduling tools and systems can’t stop cancellations, no-shows, and late arrivals. However, having those strategies in place still contributes to better patient outcomes, a more satisfactory patient experience, and a happier staff. 

If you want to be known for the next-level service you offer, don’t neglect these patient scheduling best practices. The old adage goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” So, if you’re being proactive about your scheduling practices, while also delivering superb and timely patient care, the community you serve will benefit.