Appointments

Appointment Scheduling

Reasonable timeframes are allowed for each appointment. In general, once you are comfortable with the clinic's systems private and compensable clients will be booked in as:

Initial consults: 40 minutes
Subsequent consults: 20 minutes

Pre-employment and functional capacity testing time allotment varies. This is managed by reception to ensure appropriate time allocation. In general however:

Medical component: 60 minutes
Musculoskeletal and fitness: 40 minutes
Functional capacity testing (basic, i.e. surface): 60 minutes
Functional capacity testing (comprehensive, i.e. U/G): 80 minutes

If you have any questions in relation to appointment scheduling please contact the office manager.

Appointment Flexibility

It is important to remember that health is a service industry. As such there are times where we need to ensure we are acting in the best interest of our clients and referrer network. This may result in appointments being scheduled outside of a therapist's normal schedule.

The clinic appreciates that this may be inconvenient, however it is important to remember we are here to serve and denying service can have long last consequences and implications in relation to client generation and retention, as well as impacting on the reputation of the clinic and it's therapists.

We endeavour to mitigate inconveniences wherever possible and believe by acting as a team the whole team improves.

Patient Visit Average & re-booking

Patient visit average (PVA) is a representation of client retention. Quite simply PVA is the average of how many times a client has seen you for each case. So for example if client attends for one case (i.e. a knee injury) 6 times and then 6 months later for a new case (i.e. ankle) 8 times, the PVA is 7.

We all know that patients who fail to complete their course of care are more likely to have a poorer outcome than those who do complete their course of treatment. Our clients may have other priorities, sometimes financial, that discourage them from completing care. Your patient retention is a measure of how well you educate your patients of the importance of continuing their care.

It is not uncommon for young therapists to have a PVA of 2-3, whereas experienced therapists will often have a PVA of 8-12. A PVA of 2-3 is not an ideal thing for many reasons:

It is unlikely that we can change someone's behaviours or habits in 2-3 sessions
Similarly it would be difficult to provide them with a good understanding of their condition, the evidence around rehabilitation or pain science in 2-3 sessions. It has been researched and shown that patients forget 50-80% of information provided in a medical appointment, and can misinterpret over 50% of information.
Trust and rapport and therapeutic alliance take time, and limited early interaction often impedes good outcomes.

It is encouraged that you see new clients 2-3 times in the first week, with a goal of having 4 sessions in the first 2 weeks (acute injury). This allows you to:

Monitor the results of your interventions and modify them appropriately to optimise the outcome and get them closer to their goals. A condition often will be up and down in the first few weeks.
Monitor your client's understanding of their condition and the rehabilitation process.
Reinforce the education and clarify any misinterpretation or forgotten information.
Re-aligning with the client's goal.
Help them achieve behaviour change and habit formation.

Having a solid re-booking strategy and understanding the importance of rebooking will allow you to help your client's get to the finish line. It also often means that in the long term they are spending less on their health as they are relying "band-aid" solutions which do not fully resolve the issue resulting in recurrent issues or issues from mal-adaptation and compensation.

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