Lab Reduces Wait Times with Patient Queue Technology

For urgent cares, queue management is becoming the tech du jour. Every clinic wants a way to manage patients efficiently and improve satisfaction with the best technology available and a system that meets their goals. What’s not so common is expanding that technology to include labs and other clinical services.

BayCare Urgent Care, in Tampa Bay, Florida, was successfully using Clockwise.MD while its lab was manually scheduling reservations and had no real process in place—resulting in frequent complaints about wait times. Then someone had the brilliant idea of using the same software they used for urgent care patient scheduling in their lab.

In this DocuTAP case study, you can see for yourself how one lab improved its wait time and improved patient satisfaction using Clockwise.MD’s patient queue.

BayCare Laboratories Decrease Wait Times by 83 Percent

BayCare provides laboratory services at patient service centers located throughout Tampa Bay, Florida ranging from general to specialized testing at both inpatient and outpatient facilities.

Before implementing Clockwise.MD, BayCare’s customer service center was relying on Outlook to schedule lab reservations, leaving them without a formal scheduling process. They also lacked any waiting room management at their blood draw sites, leading to frequent complaints regarding wait times. Because all 12 of BayCare’s urgent care facilities were already using Clockwise to manage wait times and improve scheduling workflows, the BayCare team decided to extend online scheduling to their laboratories. Clockwise is now live in 16 of BayCare’s labs, with nine more on the way.

Streamlining Lab Scheduling Across Channels

Clockwise allows the BayCare team to streamline scheduling in their labs across three different channels:

• Website
• Call center
• Lab facilities

Walk-in patients are able to use Clockwise check-in kiosks when they arrive at a BayCare lab facility, providing the BayCare team with a time and date stamp of each patient arrival. The BayCare call center also has access to the Clockwise system, giving customer service team members the insight they need to efficiently schedule reservations.

Making Data-backed Operating Decisions

BayCare uses a wait room monitor to display patient queues, which helps set patient expectations regarding wait times. In fact, since implementing Clockwise, the BayCare team has gone from getting frequent complaints about wait times to daily compliments about the overall positive patient experience.

Not only can BayCare team members see the number of reservations for the next day, they can also use Clockwise data to see the wait times and draw times for each individual phlebotomist (as shown above), giving them insight into how much time is being spent with each patient.

Breakdown of the percentage of patients seen on time, early, and late at BayCare’s 16 lab facilities using Clockwise.

Results

In just 90 days with Clockwise, BayCare’s laboratories streamlined the scheduling process for over 2,800 online patients and 1,600 call center patients. In addition, they have seen the following results:

• An overall wait time decrease of 83 percent
• Wait times under three minutes for online patients
• 98 percent of patients called back on time or early across all 16 facilities

“With Clockwise, we have access to real-time operational data, so we can make adjustments that will have an immediate impact as quickly as possible.”

Donna Lynch – Director of BayCare Outreach Labs