Multi Location Dental clinic facility

How Med Staffing & Consulting Helped to streamline An outpatient clinic with separate Dental clinic facility


Problems & Challenges

  1. 3 front desk employees at an outpatient clinic and 2 front desk employees at a dental clinic are tasked with various assignments in addition to attending to visitors while struggling to keep up with incoming and outgoing calls. Problems with basic call-management, long hold times, dropped calls all with patients checking in and out of their scheduled visits. They are constantly seeking help from other back office employees.
  2. During the same work day, they are also tasked with increasing the volume of patients requesting COVID-19 testing and results for various reasons (international travel, work requirements, etc.).
  3. All while correctly verifying scheduled appointments, rescheduling “no shows”, scheduling periodically indicated visits, including ‘no-fault” patients
  4. Responding to messages from providers (clinic has over 15 different specialists), regarding scheduling follow up for abnormal labs, and/or radiology results.
  5. As a result clinic had a lot of dissatisfied customers and decreasing patient turnover.

Proposed Solutions

  1. Outline all the tasks performed by front desk employees.
  2. Calculate how many employees needed to complete all tasks on time (usually based on patient volume. Perfecting this will improve patient satisfaction, retention of current patients, and attracting new patients to ensure maximum office scheduling.)
  3. Analize which tasks can be performed remotely and which require employee presence in the physical office location.
  4. Evaluate alternative staffing options to: Outsource 50-60% of routine work performed by expensive trained employees that can be performed remotely.
  5. Unburden the current employees with routine work and shift them to higher level tasks. Let them concentrate on patient satisfaction, improved patient flow and communication between all the other team members (patient, provider, specialist, medical assistant, radiology technician, lab employee, biller, manager, etc.)
  6. Lower payroll costs (minimum wage in NYS is $15/hr or $40K annual, considering payroll tax, workman's comp, disability, bonuses, etc.) Set the seal on smooth and uninterrupted functioning of all components of the practice, to prevent unnecessary high expenses associated with employees absenteeism, not to mention 20 legally paid days (holidays, sick days, vacations).
  7. Increase the educational level of future employees. (minimum wage may get you a high school graduate, or someone with inadequate language skills.)
  8. Increase the overall satisfaction of the current and trusted employees and patients.

Outcome

  1. We started with 4 remote agents, trained them to answer phone calls and use our Medical and Dental EMRs (to schedule appointments, enter demographics, send system messages, etc.) Within two weeks, they were answering 1200-1600 calls per week, spending 5-10 minutes per call (in English and Spanish), with only 7% overflow calls going to front desk.
  2. This greatly relieved the phone-work volume from the receptionists, and the most senior employees were promoted to Supervisors and trusted with more important tasks, the supervisors for Medical and Dental clinics trained and supervised the remote agents. In the practice with over 26k patients between 2 facilities, four remote agents were entirely busy answering calls and entering essential data into our EMRs, and making outgoing calls for reminders and confirmations.
  3. A third agent was trained to review patient records and lists, address system messages from providers regarding scheduling follow up for abnormal lab and/or radiology and attempt to reach patients and schedule follow ups.
  4. A fourth agent was trained as Doctor’s personal assistant, under his direct supervision, is reviewing thousands of his outstanding messages.
  5. A location supervisor was trained to be knowledgeable in all tasks of the remote agents, responsible for input office practices and train new agents, fill in for absent agents, and communicate all issues and goals directly with the Clinic Supervisors.
MODERN HEALTHCARE IS CHANGING, LET US HELP.

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info@medstaffingusa.com