Can Scheduling in the Cloud Make It Rain?

CORRelations staff regularly visits with leaders at efficient private practices to learn about the innovations, modifications, or upgrades that have made big differences.

This week, CORRelations spoke with Dina Jones, Practice Administrator at The Center for Bone and Joint Disease, a medium-sized multispecialty private orthopaedic practice that has been caring for patients in the Tampa, FL area for more than 50 years.

CORRelations: What’s been the biggest game-changer for your practice in the last year or two?

Ms. Dina Jones: We integrated a cloud-based software system for practice management that has turned the surgery schedulers’ lives around, enhanced productivity, and taken the chaos out of the practices of midlevel providers and surgeons. We chose Surgimate, but there are others.

CORRelations: Why are you so excited about it?

Ms. Jones: Using this system, our 14 mid-level providers and 10 surgeons can easily log in and see where every physician is located, and see what his or her surgery schedule looks like. Previously, we had more than 50 forms that needed to be filled in by hand. This was very time-consuming and error-prone. Rescheduling surgery was a nightmare. This system eliminated all manual paperwork. It’s linked to our EMR, all demographic and insurance information auto-populates to all the forms printed out of this system, and getting surgery details into the system takes only a few minutes with templates. This system has allowed us to improve patient follow-up, create a centralized calendar for the whole practice, and quickly identify the status of any scheduled procedure. It even has a mobile app that our providers have on their cell phones.

CORRelations: How has it worked out?

Ms. Jones: It’s been game-changing. It allows us to coordinate two dozen practices across four locations, and in particular, to maximize our ability to schedule surgery, make best use of available block time, and add on cases in real time.

Acknowledgment: Thanks also to Marie Buth, Office Supervisor, at The Center for Bone and Joint Disease.

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