Online check-in helps load-balance patient arrival volume

Challenge

The urgent care practice leaders and medical director wanted to reduce wait times by alleviating bottlenecks in the patient arrival times. They had been dealing with bottlenecks in two situations: First, patients tended to visit the older Charlton, MA campus much more heavily due to its central location and the fact that the other available facility had only recently opened. As a result, Charlton campus had longer wait times, while the newest facility in Oxford, MA, a 20 minute drive away, was under-visited despite its shorter wait times. Prior to online check-in, patients had no way of knowing about Oxford’s shorter wait unless they called both locations to check.

The second challenge is that patient arrivals clustered around the early morning hours at the Charlton location and then died down after 10:00 am. Staff sometimes had a line outside when they opened the doors which caused frustration for both staff and patients.

Solution

To address this challenge head-on, the urgent care leaders needed to find a way to smooth out the peaks and valleys in arrivals and create visibility around wait times at both locations. They turned to the Check-in Express tool from ER Express in hopes that online patient scheduling would help solve their issues.

Increase visibility

The ER Express marketing team paired up with the urgent care to design a mobile-friendly landing page on their website for the online check-in service that would allow patients to essentially ‘comparison shop’ between locations by viewing the first available time they could be seen.

Redirect the flow

At both clinics, staff offered more check-in times during the usual daily lulls to move patients away from the surge times. Not only were patients given a convenient option to plan their visit on their schedule, but they were also directed to the facility with the most capacity to handle them, during the times of day when they were less busy.