CASE STUDY
Urgent Care Clinic Takes the “Wait” Out of Waiting Room
QLess transforms an urgent care clinic with virtual check-in to improve patient care and satisfaction.
OVERVIEW
QLess helps medical professionals at a Nevada-based urgent care improve patient service flow. The QLess solution allows patients to skip the waiting room by joining a virtual queue online, from home or work, and arrive at the clinic just in time for their appointment.
“This hasn’t just been a minor improvement,” says Chief Executive Officer of the healthcare network. “QLess has totally changed how patients receive care.”
KEY POINTS
- Major healthcare provider was looking for a way to help patients skip the line.
- QLess meant patients could join a virtual line and only show up when it was your turn, which helped operational efficiency and promoted safe health practices.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
It is inconvenient for patients to sit in busy waiting rooms. The clinic needed a solution that would reduce or eliminate those office wait times and minimize the discomfort of patients. According to the CEO, one of the most frustrating parts of providing urgent care is that it often lacks urgency.
“We’ve made great advances in medicine, but the way we treat patients is the same as it’s been for centuries – they wait in line to see a doctor. As an industry, we’ve struggled to find a better solution for managing the process.”
SOLUTION
The healthcare network's CEO first discovered QLess in early 2014.
“I went to our innovation team and told them about a system that other industries were using to manage customer waiting. A few weeks later we were talking with QLess.”
Within 90 days, the urgent care facility launched a pilot program.
“QLess had experience in healthcare, so we were able to adopt the system right away. After a successful pilot, we fully rolled out Virtual Check-In to our practices."
Their Virtual Check-In manages more than 120,000 visits per year.
With QLess, patients can simply get in line virtually from the clinic’s web or mobile site and then wait for their turn wherever they happen to be. QLess alerts them 15 minutes in advance of their actual appointment by text, allowing them to arrive just in time to complete a short intake process, provide insurance information, and quickly see a provider.
Staff at the urgent care can monitor and manage the real-time, virtual queues and notify patients of delays to control expectations and reduce frustration. QLess provides the urgent care with analytics across multiple clinics featuring data about each patient’s experience, as well as staff productivity.
RESULTS
With the QLess solution, the urgent care reported a 20% increase in patient satisfaction attributed to shorter wait times for care.
Before the launch of QLess, the average wait time was 1-3 hours for patients just waiting in a waiting room. With QLess, the average patient wait time is now less than 30 minutes.
“Over 95% of our patients adopted it right away,” said the CEO. “Two metrics that we hold ourselves to are patient wait times and how accurately delays are communicated to patients. These two items have greatly improved – QLess is a game-changer for us.”
With Virtual Check-in, medical staff spends less time managing busy waiting rooms and instead focus on providing patient care. This shift has improved the efficiency and economics of their medical care operations. And, the analytics provide insights into patient preferences and concerns, as well as staff productivity, which allows the urgent care to continue improving operations and procedures.
The CEO shares some insight, “Adopting a new system and redefining internal processes will have its challenges, but the effort is worth it. The bottom line is that patients want real-time care, not to sit around wondering when they’re going to be seen.”
“Once their service is completed, our patrons receive a survey request via text. In the past we’ve done surveys by mail and through our website, but the response rate we get through QLess is 10 times more than anything we’ve received before. Overall, 82% of the respondents say they love the QLess solution and would recommend it to their friends.”