Beyond the Day-to-Day

While I spend a great deal of time reading about practitioners’ experiences and do my best to understand the day-to-day challenges you face, I have to admit that I have not walked the proverbial mile in your shoes. So I can only speculate that perhaps your workdays may have something in common with mine in that sometimes I become so busy with completing daily tasks and meeting looming deadlines that it’s difficult to look up from my desk, take a breath, and analyze the whole picture beyond the particular article or spreadsheet in front of me. In my case, that big picture involves shaping the magazine’s editorial content, addressing your needs as our readers, and keeping track of trends in the O&P profession. So I imagine, for you, with increased documentation requirements, lowered reimburse-
ments, and pressure to see more patients and be more efficient to stay afloat, it may seem difficult enough some days just to ensure that you are meeting your patients’ needs. For this issue, we thought about what may be on your mind if you have the chance to step back and examine one aspect of the larger picture: the patient experience and a few ways you may be able to improve or expand upon it.