Our Appointment Schedulers
Our Schedulers have an awesome responsibility, as they are often the first phone contact our patients have with our practice. This is a difficult job as they not only assist our patients in making an appointment, but they must also understand a complex schedule involving five physicians and a nurse practitioner. our doctors and nurse practitioner serve two hospitals, our endoscopy center, and medical office. Our Schedulers must be able to decide what type of appointment is needed, the urgency, which caregiver would be best, and in which facility the patient should be seen. In questionable cases, we ask them to put the appointment process on hold until they can confer with our physicians. In some cases, this may delay making an appoinment by 24 hours. To give our patients the best care, we also ask that our appointment staff ask our patients to bring the results of all pertinent prior consultations, lab reports, xray results, etc. on that first visit whenever possible.
When surveyed, our biggest patient complaint is difficulty in scheduling a timely appointment. We recognize that this is a problem. Unfortunately, nationwide the demand for digestive disease services has grown faster than the ability to serve them. Over the past several years, we have expanded our staff, redesigned our facility, and streamlined our services in an effort to accomodate the need, but still sometimes find it difficult to provide timely care. We are constantly looking for ways to improve.
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