It’s September and school systems all over the US have returned to school. When participating in Facebook groups, I see therapists discussing their difficulties in creating their schedules. They hate it. And I get it. I hate it, too. But when I think about how I feel about scheduling, I can’t help but get nostalgic for a simpler time – when scheduling was joyful. Sort of like how you felt as a kid when you got a new planner.
Scheduling your day as a therapist can be frustrating and daunting with a complicated scheduling system, company productivity requirements, and balancing your patient’s needs.
We’re tired of all the wasted time that goes into scheduling. The driving principle of our scheduling tool is to help you get your time back so you can focus on what really matters: treating your patients.
As a COTA for over 25 years, I have experienced difficulties with different EMR schedulers. As a DOR, I heard many valid complaints. If a scheduling system does not meet your needs efficiently, you will spend more time documenting and planning your day than caring for your patients.
Here at Ambiki, we are in the process of creating and implementing our scheduling feature. This will also be part of our up-and-coming EMR (electronic medical record) platform.
With Ambiki’s scheduling feature, therapists will have an in-depth calendar system to create, and edit single and recurring events, navigate schedule changes, and start a teletherapy session directly from the event. Multiple viewing options will make setting up daily, weekly, and monthly sessions a breeze. A few things we are considering as we build the scheduling tool:
- In our surveys and interviews with therapists, managers, and clinic owners, we asked them what they would like to have in their scheduling system. They want to streamline scheduling, documentation, and billing and to be able to start a teletherapy session right from their schedule. They want color-coded PT, OT, and SLP appointments. The ability to click and drag an event. Customizable options for their calendar view, homepage, printing, and different layouts for managers versus therapists. They want to move, delete or cancel an entire schedule for a patient or therapist to easily manage a busy clinic or school schedule.
- We know there isn’t a lot of time for training on the job. We are committed to developing a user-friendly, intuitive calendar and building tools to make it easy for self-training when you need help.
Most of us entered the therapy world to help people and make a difference in others’ lives. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could spend more time focusing on our patients and less time working on our program management system or electronic medical record platform (EMR)?
If you’re interested in giving us feedback on scheduling, we’d love to hear from you. You can send an email to me (kluster@mysidekicktherapy.com) or complete this 3-question survey. Let’s work together to try to bring some joy back into scheduling.
