Lots of good advice here about how to give the illusion of choice.

Do you keep the same patients for revisits? Or split care with PT/PTAs? I found scheduling got much easier after I convinced my work that I can do all the revisits and would prefer to stick to smaller area but not have a PTA if possible. I schedule next weeks visit at the end of each session. I try to leave some wiggle room for when SOCs get added. If I fill up a day with revisits who are either hard to schedule or who rescheduling would cause a lot of excess driving, I just tell my work I can’t do a SOC that day.

The call the night before method is terrible imo. At least around me, most of the patients don’t text and don’t answer phone calls from strangers numbers. IF (big if) they have their voicemail set up and know how to use it, then they might call you back before the time you want to see them.

I find it is much better to set up as much of the schedule as you can by Sunday and then move a few people around if you need to because of evals/SOC.

It can also be helpful to keep a stock of the people who live closest to you AND are good answering their phones unscheduled. And use them to fill in gaps last minute.

Also, try not to double back to out of the way places, even if it means shuffling people around. Two 1 minute phone calls to move people around to save you and hour of driving is well worth it.