When was the last time you secret-shopped your own practice? Have you ever?

In a recent webinar hosted by ADAM, Luna Dermatology practice manager Devon Weaver underscored the importance of evaluating the patient experience from start to finish: "I’ll book an appointment. I'll fill out the paperwork. I'll see what that looks like on the patient end, and then it helps inform our decisions on what to change or what's a little clunky or what needs to be updated."

Most practice managers spend their days looking at operations from the inside out — managing staff, reviewing schedules, handling escalations — and the patient perspective is easy to overlook.

Intentionally and regularly flipping that perspective has allowed Luna Dermatology to cut no-shows to 2%, achieve a 4.9 Google rating, and optimize schedule density. Exploring what it actually feels like to be a patient trying to book with you is a simple habit, but the insights it surfaces are anything but.

What you might find (and why it matters)

How many screens do your patients have to navigate to complete an online booking? Do they receive an appointment confirmation after they book? How many patients start the booking process but don’t finish?

These were all pain points for patients booking with Luna Dermatology’s previous scheduling software. None were invisible, but they're easy to underestimate when you're not living the experience yourself. Seeing a confusing UI through a patient's eyes — under time pressure, on a phone, between meetings — is very different from knowing abstractly that "the booking flow has a few steps."

And ultimately, if it’s not easy for patients, it’s not easy for front desk staff. If patients don’t get any kind of appointment confirmation, they’re going to call to confirm. If patients start to book online but hit friction or confusion, they’re going to call to complete the process. And as Devon put it, calling the front desk "defeats the purpose of having online scheduling."

The gap between adequate and excellent

"If it's not broken, don't fix it." It’s an adage we’ve all heard and probably said, but does this mentality work for practice managers? According to Devon, the answer is no. "Our previous solution was adequate and it was doing its job," she said. "But it wasn't keeping up with the way the industry has grown, and I wish I had switched sooner."

The problem with "adequate" is that patients don't grade on that curve. Luna Dermatology’s 4.9 Google rating wasn't built on adequate but, instead, on experiences that are without friction from start to finish. Adequate doesn’t support a top notch patient experience, and it’s not something you can engineer if you've never lived it yourself.

How to build this into your routine

Secret-shopping your own practice doesn't need to be a formal initiative. Here's how to make it a practical habit:

Book an appointment as a patient would. Use your public-facing scheduling link, not an internal tool. Go through the full flow: find a provider, pick a time, enter your information, and complete the booking. Note every point of friction — extra clicks, confusing language, missing confirmations.

Check the reminders you send. What do your confirmation and reminder emails actually look like in an inbox? Are the details easy to find? Is there a clear way to reschedule if needed? Does the tone match your practice's brand?

Fill out your own intake forms. How long does it take? Is the language clear? Are patients asked for information they've already provided? Is it mobile-friendly? These are questions your patients are silently answering every visit.

Read your own reviews — then go find what caused them. A patient who praised "how easy it was to schedule" or complained about "confusing paperwork" is pointing you directly to something. Follow the thread.

What excellence looks like

When Luna Dermatology moved to NextPatient and began sending immediate confirmations, streamlining their booking flow, and allowing patients to reschedule directly from reminder texts, the results showed up in measurable ways: a 2% no-show rate, 42% of appointments booked outside business hours, and a flood of positive Google reviews specifically mentioning the ease of the experience.

Devon described one recent review as "an administrator’s dream:"

"He talked about how it was so easy to schedule," she said, "completing paperwork went smoothly, check-in was a breeze; he had a great visit with the physician. I couldn't have written a better review myself."

That kind of review doesn't happen by accident. It happens when someone has genuinely walked the patient's path and made it as smooth as possible.

Want to hear more from Devon?

Devon covers this and a lot more in our recent webinar — including how Luna Dermatology got their no-show rate down to 2%, how they fill schedule gaps automatically when a cancellation comes in, and what she wishes she'd known before evaluating scheduling software.

If you're thinking about where friction might be hiding in your own patient experience, it's worth 30 minutes of your time. Watch the full webinar →