Practice Management Alert

What works in a pediatrician’s office might not be appropriate for other specialties.

Creating a comfortable reception area should always be on the minds of practice managers, but there’s no template for the “perfect” reception area.

Why? A comfortable environment for pediatric patients would differ significantly from a comfortable environment for geriatric patients, for example.

Follow this advice to maximize comfort for patients in your practice’s reception area.

Consider Spectrum of Patients the Practice Treats

When fitting the reception area to your patient population, knowing your customers is key, says P.J. Cloud-Moulds, owner of Turnaround Medical A/R Recovery in southern California. “Your specialty should reflect in your reception area,” she explains.

Mixed population: If you have a mixed patient population (adults and children), provide seating and reading material for both age groups. “Have a corner for kids with books just for them,” Cloud-Moulds advises. Toys for the tots would not be advisable, as that can get noisy and disturb your other patients, she continues.

Pediatric population: If you are a pediatrics practice, you might flip this advice: in other words, you might cater primarily to the pediatric patient, and then consider the comfort of the parents/adults. Experts seem to be pretty consistent in their opinion on toys in the reception area, though: Try to avoid it.

“For pediatrics, having age-appropriate age books available would be good,” says Maria V. Ciletti, RN, who works as a medical administrator in Niles, Ohio. “I was never a fan of having toys in the reception area because of the cross-contamination issues.”

If you do have toys in the reception area, make sure someone cleans them often to avoid cross-contamination among patients. This could be the person who checks/cleans the reception periodically during the day.

Geriatric population: While it’s good practice to have comfortable chairs with arms on them for all patient populations, they’re absolutely vital to a practice that sees mostly elderly patients.

“We see a large Medicare-age population, and our waiting room chairs have arms on them,” Ciletti says.

Other ways to make geriatric patients more comfortable is to have the seating area close to the restroom and close to the exam area.

Empathy for your patient population is what matters most when making decor decisions in the reception area.

“Practices need to understand the psycho-socio lives of their patients,” says Horowitz.