Because your practice’s front desk is the first point of contact for most patient interactions, that’s where many of your patient relationships are made or broken. Many practices find that optimizing their front desk can help them improve efficiency, strengthen patient loyalty and boost reimbursement.

Check out five front desk optimizations that may help you reach your practice’s goals and keep patients coming back for years to come.

1. Create Checklists

Even the most seasoned reception desk staff members can forget important elements of the check-in and check-out processes. Creating checklists and scripts that keep them on track can be helpful for both the team member and the patients. That way, nothing is missed and all information is gathered that will allow you to bill for the patient’s services.

2. Offer Online Appointment Scheduling

Your front desk team probably takes between five and 10 minutes to get a new patient appointment scheduled, and that takes them away from handling other essential tasks. If you offer online appointment scheduling, you can free up time in your reception team’s day and keep patients happier by saving them from having to make a phone call to book an appointment.

3. Ensure That Other Departments Are Trained on Front Desk Operations

If your front desk staff can’t make it into work, your practice may fall into disarray. With no one to check patients in, collect copays, make follow-up appointments or answer the phone, customer service will suffer — and patients will get mad.

You should ensure that you’ve trained other team members on front desk operations so you always have automatic fill-ins that can seamlessly take the place of your front desk staff, keeping things running all the time.

4. Schedule Patients Properly

One issue that reception desk staff members often face is having to explain long wait times to angry patients. If you aren’t scheduling patients properly, you’re likely to have problems with extended waiting room times, and unhappy patients. If you aren’t sure how to change your scheduling processes, consider using scheduling software to calculate average visit times, or hire a consultant who can help you.

5. Offer Multiple Payment Options

Front desk staff members spend a lot of time trying to collect payments from patients. One way to speed up this process is by expanding the types of payments you accept. For instance, you may be interested in accepting digital payments or keeping a credit card on file for automatic payments. These can help streamline the process and get things moving faster.