Your practice staff now understands the importance of standardized developmental screening. But how do you move from deciding to screen to actually screening? By integrating the screening process seamlessly into your current practice flow!
Integration cannot be underestimated. It is easy to see how screening can make a difference, but with the other demands that every staffer faces in their day to day work, there is also a reason screening is not currently occurring regularly. If you ask your staff to add something completely new and time-consuming- for instance, mailing out a developmental screen to families before scheduled appointments when there is currently no mailing system in place- you are setting the process up for failure. If instead you are only adding one step to a staffers current process- like having the receptionist include the screen in initial paperwork when signing in a family- it is more likely to happen and less likely to cause resistance.
