4 Ways a Practice Extender Helps You See More Patients Without Working More Hours

There are only so many hours in a clinic day. At some point, working harder doesn’t achieve anything other than running you down.

A practice extender doesn’t just take things off your plate. Like Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great, once you have the right people on the bus, they can meaningfully increase the number of patients you see without adding a single hour to your day.

Here are four ways to make that happen.

But first – what Is a Practice Extender?

A practice extender is anyone who takes tasks off your plate so you can focus on what only you can do. That could be a nurse practitioner, a PA, an RN, a clinical assistant, or even a well-trained MOA.

1. Offloading Administrative Tasks

The time you spend on admin before, during and after clinic is time you are not seeing patients.

A practice extender can prep charts before you walk in the door. If you use templates, having your consult and follow-up notes pre-loaded with past medical history and previous treatments means you are finalizing each note, not starting from scratch.

They can also manage office supplies, track stock (ex. liquid nitrogen stores in my office), and handle the small operational tasks that eat your time.

None of this requires your training but all of it requires your time if nobody else does it.

2. Handling Routine Patient Communication

Not every patient message or result needs to come to you.

A practice extender can help you see more patients by calling patients with normal or expected results, respond to straightforward questions, and triage incoming messages using guidelines you set. They escalate to you when something falls outside those guidelines. Everything else gets handled.

This alone can reclaim a surprising amount of your day…and added phone calls at the end of the day.

3. Running Patients Alongside You in Clinic

Think of it like having a senior resident.

While you are wrapping up one patient, your practice extender is already in the next room taking history, doing the exam, and if you have common referral patterns, starting patient education using your own information sheets.

By the time you walk in, the groundwork is done. Your time goes to building rapport, confirming the diagnosis and treatment decisions. The conversation that actually requires you.

4. Running Their Own List While You Do Something Else

This is (IMO) the highest-leverage use of a practice extender and the one most physicians haven’t considered.

For example, if you do procedures under local anesthetic, you know there is always turnaround time between cases. If you use operative note templates, the documentation is really quick.

A practice extender can have a list of consult or follow-up visits than runs parallel to your procedure list. You pop over between procedures, confirm the diagnosis, address concerns, review treatment options, and get back to your next procedure. The patient education has already happened. The consult note template is pretty much completed by your extender. Your time is spent on the part that needs your judgement.

In my practice, this is how I see carpal tunnel and trigger finger consults between local anesthetic cases. The extender handles the history and education. I get to focus on the treatment (ie surgery), risks and outcomes.

This has means I have a full procedure day and consult day running at the same time. And the amount of extra work for me of that consult day is pretty minimal.

The Bottom Line

A practice extender can help you see more patients without working more hours. The four are: admin support, routine patient communication, running alongside you in clinic and carrying their own patient list in parallel (you just pop over).

You don’t have to implement all four. Even introducing one to your practice will let you see more patients with less overall effort if that’s your goal.