The Issue – Physician – Know your schedule!

For 23 years, my partner and I ran into several problems in our thriving OB-GYN practice. We had to establish a routine in order to try to eliminate some of these problem areas.

Surgery Scheduling

Because of the nature of surgery scheduling, each night we would have to call the page operator at both hospitals where we practiced and ask to check our updated surgery schedules. Next, we would have to call both obstetrical units and ask if there were any inductions scheduled for the next day. The problem with our schedules was that surgeries and inductions were often added after we left the office. By calling at night, we would know exactly what we had to do the following day to avoid the embarrassing phone call from the operating room wondering when we were going to appear for our surgery. This was a time consuming and confusing situation.

        The SecuReach Solution

• Web based application can be accessed from anywhere there is an internet connection making a real time “virtual office.”
• Later appointments added to the schedule – meetings, surgeries, nursing home visits – all can be seen at a glance.
• Physicians can access their schedule from home and see not only what surgeries and meetings they have, but also their patient load that particular day. They can see what the future schedule is and may edit the schedule in any way.
• The application is intuitive and very easy to follow – one can see daily, weekly or monthly views. Appointments can be double booked and added at other times with ease. A more detailed description can be added to a field if desired (i.e. a note saying – “this is a difficult case – do not schedule any more surgeries today.”)

Office Scheduling

As every physician knows, office scheduling is also a problem. Our practice had two separate offices with separate scheduling software. Every time our staff scheduled a surgery or office appointment, one office had to call the other office and tell them the date and time of the appointment so that we would not be double booked – and vice-versa! The cost of setting up the lines to make a network in separate locations is prohibitive and involves large monthly charges for these connections. Many of my colleagues had “satellite” offices where they would see patients once or twice a week. One plastic surgeon saw patients in five satellite offices. This forced him to hand carry all the charts with him. Scheduling future appointments for these patients was a logistical nightmare. Either they had to call their primary office for every patient to schedule the next appointment or they told the patients that they would call them back and schedule appointments at a later date when they were back in the office.

        The SecuReach Solution

• Satellite offices can make appointments on-line and not have to notify the primary office of changes to the schedule.

“No Shows”

When patients do not show for their appointment, an opportunity for income is lost forever. With patients waiting several weeks for appointments, it is understandable that some will simply forget. Appointment reminders are a simple way to increase office income. But how do you do this? We tried having our staff call patients before their appointments. This was not effective because patients were often not home when the office was open. The extra time spent in this task for our staff did not prove cost-effective. 

        The SecuReach Solution

• Appointment reminders for patients are automatic and require no extra work for the staff. The reminders are divided into two parts:
  • A customized personal greeting from the office “This is Tammy from Medina County Ob-GYN. The following is information regarding your office appointment. If you cannot make this, please call us immediately at 330-721-8255.
  • A dialer message, reading from the appointment scheduler “Mary Smith has an appointment with Dr. Pap at 8:30 on Tuesday, July 8.”
• The group messaging feature that SecuReach has can also be used if there is a sudden office emergency and patients need to be rescheduled. One message can be dictated voice over IP and sent to all the remaining scheduled patients in a day with one click of the mouse. In that way staff is not tied up trying to notify patients of a cancellation.