Key Takeaways
- Hiring more people won’t help if your team isn’t clear on who should be doing what.
- A lot of your stress might be coming from tasks landing on the wrong person’s plate.
- Even with a full team, things can feel chaotic if no one really owns key responsibilities.
- Doing a simple task audit can show you what’s working (and what’s not) in your day-to-day flow.
- Redefining roles based on what people are good at could make your practice run smoother.
- Having basic systems in place (like checklists or shared task lists) keeps things from slipping through the cracks.
- Once your internal setup is solid, a virtual assistant can take care of the leftover admin work, without adding to your payroll.
If your practice feels like it’s running at full capacity but your team is constantly overwhelmed, the natural instinct is to hire more staff. More hands should mean less work, right? But if you’re like many optometry practice owners, you’ve added team members only to find that the stress, confusion, and bottlenecks never really went away.
That’s because there’s an underlying issue holding your team back.
In this blog, we’ll explore why adding more people doesn’t always solve the problem, how to identify what’s really creating the overload, and what you should do first before expanding your team.
Why Adding More Staff Doesn’t Always Lighten the Load
If your practice is busier than ever, hiring more staff might seem like the only way to keep up. But many practice owners learn the hard way: more people don’t always mean less stress. In fact, if your current team isn’t working within a clear structure, you might be setting new hires up to struggle before they even start.
When More People = More Problems
You bring someone on board to lighten the load, but the phones still go unanswered, tasks still fall through the cracks, and your senior staff keeps asking you what to do next. Sound familiar? That’s usually a sign that management (not headcount) is the real issue.
If your team doesn’t know who owns what, even the best new hire will end up confused, underused, or overwhelmed. For example, you might hire someone to help with admin, but without clear direction, they spend their first week shadowing different staff members and waiting for someone to hand them a task. Instead of helping, they rely on you for answers, pulling you deeper into the vortex just to keep things moving.
New Hire, Same Bottlenecks
Weeks after hiring, you’re still confirming appointments, chasing insurance details, or redoing intake forms that were filled out incorrectly. Meanwhile, your lead optician is answering phones between frame fittings, and your techs are checking voicemails between patients. It’s not that people aren’t working; it’s that everyone’s working around the gaps, not within a system.
Unless tasks are clearly assigned and aligned with each person’s strengths, adding staff just stretches your chaos across more people. You’re left with the same frustrations, just a bigger payroll.
Poor Delegation (Not Understaffing) Is the Real Culprit
Just because your team is busy doesn’t mean they’re working efficiently. Often, the real issue isn’t how many people you have, it’s how their time is being used.
The Wrong People Are Handling the Wrong Tasks
In many optometry practices, tasks naturally default to whoever is available in the moment. But that quick-fix approach creates long-term inefficiency.
Here are a few real-world examples:
- The front desk is handling phones, verifying insurance, and trying to sell frames, all at once.
- The OD is reviewing schedules and calling patients about reminders.
The techs are constantly being pulled away from patient care to check voicemails or locate missing records.
None of these are inherently poor performers. They’re simply doing too much of the wrong kind of work because no one has clearly delegated otherwise.
Lack of Ownership Creates Chaos
When ownership is vague, everything becomes everyone’s job, which means no one is truly accountable. That leads to:
- Overlap: two people doing the same task unknowingly
- Gaps: tasks that never get done because everyone assumes someone else is handling them
- Confusion: team members constantly asking, “Is this mine? Should I be doing this?”
This slows down your team, reduces patient satisfaction, and increases stress across the board.
Lastly, designate a regular time, maybe every Friday afternoon, for one staff member to conduct patient recalls. These quick check-ins with lapsed patients can revive appointments and maintain continuity of care. It’s also an opportunity to re-engage patients who may have drifted away after a single visit.
A recent study even stated that poor delegation1 in healthcare settings leads to inefficiency and increased burnout among both providers and staff.
How Poor Delegation Drains Time, Morale, and Money
You might think your team is stretched thin, but the real leak might be in how their time is spent, not just how much time they have.
You’re Paying for Expertise But Using It Poorly
When licensed professionals or high-value staff are pulled into low-value tasks, your practice suffers in two ways:
- Financially: You’re paying a premium wage for work that could be handled by someone with a lower hourly rate.
Clinically: These tasks distract from the patient-facing responsibilities that actually generate revenue and drive outcomes.
Examples:
- Your OD spends 15 minutes re-entering EHR data because no one owns follow-up documentation.
- Your lead optical tech answers general appointment inquiries while trying to fit frames.
These small leaks add up to big losses, both in time and profitability.
Your Team Feels Understaffed Even When It’s Not
Poor delegation makes your practice feel busier than it is. That sense of constant urgency? Often caused by tasks bouncing around the team without clear ownership or timing.
The result:
- Everyone feels overloaded, even when the headcount is enough
- Staff struggle to prioritize because they don’t have clarity
- Burnout creeps in, leading to higher turnover and more rehiring cycles
Efficient practices don’t just hire more people; they ensure the right tasks are assigned to the right people and eliminate unnecessary distractions.
How to Fix Internal Delegation Before Hiring Again
If your clinic feels stuck in reactive mode, it’s time to pause and get a clearer picture of how work actually moves through your team.
Start With a Team Task Audit
- List Every Recurring Task
Include clinical, administrative, and front-desk tasks. Break them into categories like:- Scheduling and patient reminders
- Insurance and billing follow-ups
- Optical sales and frame management
- Charting and EHR tasks
- Phone and email communication
- Identify Current Ownership
For each task, write down who is currently handling it. This helps expose mismatches, overloads, or gaps. - Ask Who Should Own Each Task
Based on each team member’s role, strengths, and bandwidth, determine who is the best fit. You may find tasks handled by your OD that could be offloaded, or discover responsibilities that no one truly owns. - Involve Your Team
Get feedback. Your staff likely has insights about hidden tasks and broken handoffs. Including them builds buy-in and often leads to smarter delegation decisions.
Redesign Roles Around Strengths and Workflow
Instead of defaulting to “front desk does everything,” assign ownership by function:
- One person handles all reminders
- Another is responsible for insurance follow-ups
- Optical leads manage frame orders and patient education
- Techs focus on clinical prep and support, not phones
This clarity improves accountability and reduces task overlap.
The University of Washington Medical Center also emphasizes that structured team2 roles in clinical settings improve overall efficiency and reduce burnout.
These small process shifts can reduce after-hours stress and give you back your evenings, without sacrificing patient care.
Build Simple Delegation Systems
Avoid relying on memory or hallway conversations. Implement systems like:
- Shared checklists in Google Docs or Notion
- Task assignments within your EHR
- End-of-day accountability huddles
Documented workflows ensure delegation is repeatable, even when someone is out sick.
Final Thought: More People Won’t Fix a Broken System
Delegation isn’t just about handing things off. It’s about creating clarity, structure, and space for everyone on your team to focus on what they do best. Before you hire again, take a close look at how tasks move through your practice.
You might not need more people. You might just need a smarter way to use the team you already have.
When You’ve Done All That, and Still Need Help
Once you’ve cleaned up your internal delegation, you might find there are still some tasks (like follow-up calls, reminders, or insurance verifications) that don’t need to be handled in-house.
That’s where a trained, remote Virtual Assistant can step in.
Teem specializes in integrating skilled VAs (real people, not bots or A.I.) into optometry practices, handling tasks like scheduling, scribing, and admin support. With no complex setup or long onboarding, we can help lessen your stress without needing to hire another in-office staff member.
Delegate your tasks better by reaching out to us HERE.
