When it comes time to go live with your website and local listings, you may be confused as to how much you want to share in regards to your operating hours.
We encourage you to have phone coverage as often as possible and to list hours based on clinical and non-clinical availability. This will encourage more phone calls from prospective patients. We also recommend online scheduling for new patients to increase the effectiveness of your marketing. Google also gives precedent to businesses that are open when a person is doing a search in real time. Extending your operational hours to include any time the phones are handled can help to encourage growth.
By listing both clinical and administrative hours, you'll avoid looking as if you have limited availability and will open the door to more conversations and more new patients. As the practice expands, you may choose to list only your clinical hours to allow for patients to know you do not offer appointments at all hours.
Once a new patient becomes a patient of record, you'll keep them booked and that will happen before they leave their appointment. Your operational hours will become far less important once you get them in. You won't have the opportunity to get them in if you don't make your team accessible by phone and online scheduling.
We hope this insight is helpful.