Appointment Times

Hi Matt,

How much time do you allocate on the schedule for new patient visits vs follow-up visits?  Hour? Half hour? Twenty minutes?  Both back when you were seeing an average of 50-60 visits per week and now that you’re at 80-100 visits per week?  Thanks!

Yes  – this is one adjustment we made when we got very busy. What we do now is set a new patient appointment slot at 9:30am and 2:30pm on Mon, Wed,  and Friday and then 10:30am and 4:30pm on Tues and Thurs.  We do this to try to give a mixture of early morning and later afternoon times without making them the first or last appointment of the day as new patients sometimes don’t show up and it is frustrating to be there early or be staying later for a no show. And yes, if we have a regular, repeating patient that wants to get in and the only time we have is a new patient slot, we will give them that time a day or two before. We always give top preference to existing patients and will work-in any existing patient in real distress no matter how busy we are.

Matthew Bauer

natasha

Hi Matt, when do you have time to fit in a half hour complimentary consultation?? Do you set aside time slots for those? And do you give every new patient a complimentary consultation?

Best wishes from London 

Hi Natasha  –  Great to hear from London. Yes  – We set aside one time in the morning and one in the afternoon for new patient consultations and every new patient is started that way with a free consultation. You can read a bit more about that and how I schedule my day/week in the posts I made before in this same thread. The way I work, I don’t need to do a full exam in order to be able to tell a new patient if I can help them and to explain the treatment process. I just need to get their history and especially details of their pattern of symptoms. The whole process should not take more than 30 minutes although some people are difficult to keep their answers short. I teach those steps in my book and that was a big part of the class I gave yesterday (still recovering). I teach that there is a logical way to get a reasonable estimate that acupuncture will be successful or not for any patient and once you learn this and can explain this to a prospective patient, it makes them feel much more comfortable about beginning treatment.

Thanks so much for posting and feel free to ask follow-up questions or post on another topic!

Matthew Bauer

natasha

thanks for that; there is a lot to learn, but I get very excited reading your and other people’s helpful posts: by the way I especially love what you wrote about not charging ‘no-shows’ or late cancellors, to cultivate the best Qi in the practice….you really put into words what I only vaguely felt but couldn’t express.  

All the best!!!