Hi Laura, I am new to office administration and trying to figure out how to maximize our hygiene schedule to meet our goals. Is there a way to assign colors per dollar value with high, medium, low, possibly to aid in scheduling? How do you recommend making sure the hygiene goal is met per day? Hygienists do most of the scheduling in their rooms. They are putting in treatment for next visit before they leave now so we know what the value of that appointment will be. I would appreciate any input you could help me with.

ANSWER: Thank you for reaching out to me about this, I am glad to hear that you are thinking in terms of production with your schedule, which is better than most offices. I have to be honest though, I don’t necessarily think that is something I would recommend for hygiene. The reason that I don’t think that it is necessary for hygiene is that their dollar value amount really does not have too big of a range. The difference between a prophy and a perio appointment is really only a few hundred dollars, versus a low to high dollar appointment for the doctor. Putting a prophy with exam and fmx won’t make or break the office production versus just a prophy and exam. Therefore, I don’t suggest worrying too much about production for hygiene.

I would say however, that hygiene has two other factors that are more important for me, which is variety of appointments per day per hygienist and no downtime. [mepr-show if=”loggedout”][/mepr-show] [mepr-active memberships=”629,630,37388,37393,37672,37676,37670,37668,37674,44674,232156″ ifallowed=”show” unauth=”message” unauth_message=”Answer hidden, please login or purchase a membership to view.”]

1. ) Variety: Due to the nature of the procedures that hygienists perform – having a good mix of them will not only help the hygienist reach their daily goal but it will also help to prevent burn out. If the hygienists are doing the same thing over and over, especially a low production appointment, they will not hit their goal and/or will get tired of repetition. I think that it is more important to have a mixture of high and low dollar value appointments for them each day.
2. ) Downtime: Where the doctor’s schedule should be built based off production, a hygiene schedule needs to be productive too but you will have a much better chance of it if you make sure they are busy the entire day. You want to make sure that there is no downtime in between appointments in hygiene in order to make sure they hit their daily goal.

I hope that this helps and be sure to check out our scheduling mastery program, I think it might be very helpful for you on details like this one.[/mepr-active]