Re: Solo family doctors what are your slow times during the year?

[Guest guest]

Summer is for well child checks/yearly physicals. I do most of mine July and August (that's why I schedule my own childrens' in December!) Now is the time for college physicals. With such a high pediatric population, same day sick visits will be very common. Some docs only do well visits during certain days/times. May work, but it's not the IMP way of life.

Subject: Solo family doctors what are your slow times during the year?To: "imp imp" < >Date: Monday, June 30, 2008, 3:11 PM

Since I'm fairly new in the game, I was wondering what specific times of the year the family physicians (that also see a lot of pediatrics) on here consider "slow" times and good times to take a vacation or limit hours? I have 60-70% pediatric population.Thanks!

[Guest guest]

As said that is when our practice does such things. It is good for you, the flow of the practice and the patients families. If they do their CPE's after the last day of the previous semester then you can apply those CPE's to the forms you will have to assist them with for school the following year. Now you can do most of these in one shot instead of doing CPE's all across the year and having tons of families throw forms in your face at the end of August. Much better to get it all out of the way when things are traditionally a little slower anyway. You get a bit of a bump in patient traffic when you need it, they get what they need to feed the system and now you will have an extra slot or two per week or more during winter sick time when you will really need it if you are kind of up to

speed. Helps balance that flow, both of patients and cash... Not too bad where I sit.

Still not sure why we got slammed the last week and half or so. Usually except for refills this is a slow time of year just before and after the 4th of July. Ya never can tell.

[Practiceimprovemen t1] Solo family doctors what are your slow times during the year?To: "imp imp" <Practiceimprovement 1yahoogroups (DOT) com>Date: Monday, June 30, 2008, 3:11 PM

Since I'm fairly new in the game, I was wondering what specific times of the year the family physicians (that also see a lot of pediatrics) on here consider "slow" times and good times to take a vacation or limit hours? I have 60-70% pediatric population.Thanks!

[Guest guest]

Just thought of something. believe it or not we frequently see a drop around the begining of the year. Many patients have new deductables and so they avoid coming in for a bit, until they just can't anymore or some major thing has bumped them over anyway. The seniors with tradional Medicare too as it has a bit of a new deductable every year.

Now here is a funny one and it always happens like clockwork. If I could invest in it, we would be rich! At the begining of Feb. we get a few MS 2's or 3's to have some of their first clinic experiences in our office. Like clock work all of a sudden our patient volumn crashes to almost nothing! We swear these students are a Jinx. Even to the day sometime. So we've got student Tues and Thurs, it is dead quiet, but the other three days are like gang busters. That happened this year. The other previous years the bottom just fell out on the entire week they were there. "Shame if you were only here last week you could have seen an XYZ in the flesh, it would have made a great teaching case."

But we took our own vaction (first in about 10 years, thank you Grandma for the treat) at the begining of January and didn't regret if a bit. And the lines at Disney World were so short during the weekdays it was great!

Solo family doctors what are your slow times during the year?

Since I'm fairly new in the game, I was wondering what specific times of the year the family physicians (that also see a lot of pediatrics) on here consider "slow" times and good times to take a vacation or limit hours? I have 60-70% pediatric population.Thanks!