Medical practices have to schedule and register hundreds of patients, which can be time-consuming, especially if they rely on phone calls. One Chicago-based practice was struggling to handle the calls, leading to frustrated patients and not enough appointments being made.
Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) is a patient-focused, community based not-for-profit healthcare provider serving the Chicago suburbs from four locations.
Their call center was already busy and overwhelmed by incoming calls. However, when the COVID-19 hit and the demand for testing, and eventually vaccinations, skyrocketed, the team wasn’t able to keep up with the 4,000 or more calls that came in every week. Each call took more than 30 minutes with intake data collection and entry and scheduling. As a result, new and existing patients ended up waiting on hold for so long that many decided to hang up and try elsewhere.
As a result, the overwhelmed team managed to book only 80 appointments per week. This was not ideal for the practice or the call center. The low productivity not only affected VNA’s bottom line, but it put the jobs and income of the call center team at risk.
It was time to do something and Curogram’s best-in-class patient engagement platform has the features to help.
First, Curogram integrates with any EMR, including NextGen, VNA’s platform. The integration was complete within 48 and VNA was able to implement features including online appointment scheduling, HIPAA-compliant two-way texting, and digital forms.
A nearly instantaneous change occurred. The volume of inbound calls dropped, but the number of booked appointments skyrocketed. The practice went from 80 appointments booked per week to 1300.
A study of the metrics revealed that around 100,000 people tried to book appointments online in a single day. The easy-to-use platform ensured that no one wasted time on the phone or gave up before booking their appointment.
The digital forms also saved the VNA call center a significant amount of time. Patients completed their own paperwork online. Since Curogram integrates with NextGen, the patient data transferred immediately, saving 30 minutes for each patient’s data needs.
Curogram increased VNA productivity and appointments made by over 1,000%. The call center was able to handle calls from patients with more intricate needs. VNA was able to serve a greater part of their community with outstanding patient care, COVID-19 testing, and vaccines.
Curogram is an enterprise-ready patient engagement platform that streamlines patient communications while maintaining HIPAA-level security. Our best-in-class software can:
If you think Curogram can benefit your healthcare business, schedule a demo today to learn more about our features and how we can help your practice thrive.