How often do you run late? One of the first signs that a practice needs to upgrade its systems is a lack of punctuality. If you often run behind in your schedule, it means you either don’t care or your systems aren’t working. Start tracking how often your practice runs late. One way to do this is to give every patient that has to wait more than 10 minutes for their appointment a $5 coffee shop gift card and keep count of the gift cards. By giving out gift cards you’ll be able to apologize and save the relationship and track how often you’re late. We recently saw one practice that was giving out at least five gift cards every day. They quickly realized that their systems needed a serious upgrade.