As a DPC doc, time is on your side. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything in your power to manage it effectively. Tasks like handling off-hours communication, or sending effective and quick email responses can be streamlined to make sure you have time for everything. Here are a few tips to help make sure you have a leg up on your time management instead of the other way around.
Do your patients follow up on their own emails?
If your patients send emails, and then follow up with questions, perhaps there’s more you can do to make your response to them robust and comprehensive. Anticipate their needs, and include more information than they’ve asked for. Go a step above and beyond what they’re expecting. Speak human, not doctor. You went to medical school, not your patients! Use simplified terms, and include links to more in-depth explanation where applicable. Here’s a great resource to make each and every email you send infinitely better, from your word choice, to tone, to the actual content of your message.
Do you send the same email time and time again?
Your patients have lots of questions, and it’s great that you’re available to answer them all. But those questions become repetitive and before long you find yourself typing the same response over and over. Something’s gotta give, right? Use text snippets to reduce the time you spend responding while still maintaining your email’s integrity. Tools like Breevy integrate with your operating system to abbreviate bits of content, and then automatically expand into an entire paragraph. Essentially, it works just like macros in the Atlas.md EMR if you’re familiar. Super handy, quick, and accurate! Read more