QUESTION:  What kind of office hours should I keep in my practice?

ANSWER:  Office hours require careful study, analysis of your patient base and adjustment depending on patient needs and desires.

Chiropractic practice is a time-based endeavor on every level.  Your office hours are your window to your patients, who are also paying customers and consumers with many demands and needs competing for their time.  Of all of the elements that should go into determining clinic hours, patient patterns are the most important.  Factors to look at include the nature of employment in your community.  Commuters are going to have a very different time window to come in than factory workers or people who work close to your clinic.  Pediatrics centered practices need to consider school and parental timing needs.  In an industrial city, where factory workers work in three shifts, earlier openings and/or later hours may also be indicated.  Likewise, rural practitioners may find that farm centered patients prefer early morning hours. 

Survey the employment and living patterns in your community as your first step.  Also, look at what other chiropractic practices have for their office hours.  Sometimes your colleagues' hours offer helpful patterns from which you can learn.  Sometimes, they point out gaps in care availability that present you and your practice with an opportunity.  Based on those findings, start with a pattern of hours that offer your patients and potential patients the widest possible latitude in which to come in.  Over a period of three to six months, you will be able to identify more precisely the busy and slower times and adjust your hours accordingly.

Start with what most experienced practitioners agree are reasonable hours.  For example, consider the following initial schedule:

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 8:30 or 9:00 AM to 12:00 Noon and from 1:30 or 2:00 PM until 6:00 PM.

Thursdays and Saturdays, 9:00 AM until 12:00 Noon or 1:00 PM.

In a new practice, it is important to let the public know that you are there to serve them and available when they are.  This might mean starting with evening or early morning hours.  You will want to adjust your hours, usually cutting back, to  establish a care and cost-effective schedule as quickly as possible because it costs money to maintain staff, keep the lights on and to be present, whether there are any patients coming or not.   MAKE SURE ALL PATIENTS AND POTENTIAL PATIENTS KNOW WHAT YOUR SCHEDULED OFFICE HOURS ARE.  Sending a reminder note to patients outlining your clinic hours also allows you to keep in touch with patients you have not seen for a while. 

In addition to in-office practice, mobile care and house calls are starting to make a comeback.  This is a very time-intensive service since your travel time between patients greatly multiplies the time you need to devote to each patient.  Travel to places, such as nursing homes and other centers where patients are concentrated together may offer a time-effective opportunity if there is a combined need and demand for chiropractic services to be met.

Remember, your time is your most valuable asset.  It must be spent on providing direct care, but you must also remember that time will be required to meet the growing record keeping, billing and documentation demands that accompany contemporary practice.  Your practice is a service business.  By careful study and dedication, you can rapidly find the right balance between availability to your patients, time for doing the paperwork, and for doing the kind of developmental work a new practice requires.  That balance will be the key to your success.  It is important, however, never to forget that your practice must have your full and serious attention and that your investment in time, in the most efficient manner, is required of you every day.