But we’re a 4-DVM practice projecting a 12% visit bump in Q2 after rolling out nurse appointments, but the doctors are near capacity — has anyone moved to staggered 10-hour shifts with a floating tech lead to preserve rounds and lunches while keeping same-day slots? I’m piloting a simple KPI board in Monday.com (DVM utilization, recheck capture, phone abandon) and would love guardrails before I lock the April schedule…
What worked for us was giving the “floating tech lead” the sole right to release two 20‑min same‑day blocks per DVM at 10:30 and 3:30, with CSRs blocked from touching them; that preserved rounds/lunch and bumped recheck capture about 8%… Minor caveat: the 10‑hour stagger only stuck after we moved nurse visits to:15/:45 to avoid room collisions — does your Monday.com board track block fill by hour?
If you’re serious about staggered 10s, anchor a swing DVM 11–9 and let the floating tech lead control a 45‑min “triage buffer” that only opens when phone abandon >8% or utilization >85% on your Monday.com board. , our lunches kept getting eaten until we coded them as a “procedure” in the PMS and locked them; moving rechecks to nurse blocks pre‑10 and post‑5 kept same‑day slots intact. Are your nurse appointments capped per hour per DVM or free‑floating?
With a 12% Q2 bump, I’d convert two nurse slots into drop-offs at 8:15 and 1:15, then run a 12‑minute “intake huddle” where one doc triages and assigns; it keeps a real lunch and frees two same‑day options without stretching hours. Layer a strict 5‑minute dictation after each case 2–6 pm (scribe or tech assist) to stop rounds from creeping. @lisa_m_89, have you tried micro‑rounds right after intake instead of end‑of‑day huddles?
We kept lunch intact by making 12:30–1:00 a hard no‑doctor zone and shifting two ‘nurse appointments’ into a 1:05 handoff block run by the nurses; the docs come back to a clean slate and we reliably keep two same‑day spots after 3:00. Small caveat: it falls apart if the front desk backfills that handoff block — lock it; would that mesh with your board’s phone abandon trigger?