Krystal Duarte, senior business intelligence developer at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston
Photo: Krystal Duarte
Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston is a referral center for advanced eye care, serving patients throughout Greater Boston, Metrowest, the North Shore, South Shore and Cape Cod. It was the first private multi-specialty ophthalmology practice in the country, founded in 1969. Today, Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston has 66 providers and 450 employees, with 14 clinic locations with 250 exam rooms.
THE PROBLEM
The healthcare organization has a unique clinical setup, similar to a collection of smaller practices where each physician independently runs and rents their clinical space from Ophthalmic Consultants, some of which Ophthalmic Consultants owns and some it leases from a commercial agency. So instead of Ophthalmic Consultants covering the cost of expenses like rooms, technicians and more, individual physicians are covering it themselves.
"Since physicians pay for the exam rooms they use out of their own pocket, we needed a reliable system to accurately capture which rooms were used by which physicians each day," said Krystal Duarte, senior business intelligence developer at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston. "Before turning to exam room management technology, we were keeping a spreadsheet of every room that every physician used, every day of the month.
"Not only did we want to ensure physicians were paying for the rooms they used, we also wanted to make sure they weren't being overcharged for rooms they didn't use," she continued. "This left our staff with a heavy administrative burden trying to collect accurate utilization data and correct discrepancies when a physician didn't use a room originally assigned to them."
With the spreadsheet method, staff would not be notified if a physician dropped off a day or changed from five exam rooms to four. Too often, the teams were two months behind processing the information and submitting it to the finance team, and there was no visibility into how they were using their space.
Not only did this cause a lack of data accuracy, it left a sense of dissatisfaction with physicians and burnout among staff.
PROPOSAL
In an attempt to solve the problems, Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston acquired vendor QGenda's exam room management system.
"Our number one goal was to increase data accuracy and have a source of truth to turn to for exam room usage," Duarte explained. "QGenda proposed their exam room management system for accurate, centralized visibility into upcoming exam room usage and availability in real time, which also would allow physicians to request and reallocate space based on physicians' time-off needs.
"Not only was this type of technology supposed to help with our data issues, it would improve efficiencies across scheduling, increase transparency and satisfaction for physicians, and streamline schedule reporting for finance," she added.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
With the new exam room management technology, Ophthalmic Consultants was able to create new policies for physician engagement in room management and scheduling in one single system. Since this system became the scheduling source of truth for the finance team, physicians can verify their schedules – including time-off requests – and exam rooms daily.
"Our team also can now easily identify any issues proactively, improving both accuracy and transparency," Duarte said. "As a result, our physicians have gained confidence they're using the rooms they are being charged for, increasing their job satisfaction.
"In terms of utilization, it has allowed us to have a clearer picture into room usage," she continued. "Previously, we were thinking overall utilization was close to 100%, since physicians were often told there wasn't room for any additional providers when they would ask to switch rooms."
However, with insight from the QGenda system, Ophthalmic Consultants found utilization was closer to 50%.
"So, while our initial goal with implementing the technology was to achieve visibility into accurate room utilization data to ensure physicians were charged appropriately, it also allowed us to think strategically around improving space utilization and optimizing clinical resources moving forward and make decisions that also would benefit Ophthalmic Consultants and patients," she said.
RESULTS
The data insights the exam room management technology provides has enabled Ophthalmic Consultants to make strategic decisions and improve overall financial health by reducing real estate cost and overhead expenses. More specifically, staff is able to determine where it can consolidate offices – and the costs associated with them.
"For example, we uncovered room utilization was at only about 46% for one of our locations," Duarte reported. "So, we cross-referenced patient demographics and found most of the patients drive past other clinic locations on their way to their appointment. As a result, we moved and scheduled existing clinicians to the other, more conveniently located facilities.
"All this insight together made us confident we could close the underutilized location without disrupting physician and patient accessibility and avoid being locked into a costly, long-term lease," she added.
Ophthalmic Consultants was able to close two underutilized clinics, and in turn has recouped $750,000 per year. It very recently has closed two more clinics for a total of four, so that dollar amount is continuing to build.
"In terms of the administrative burden, our finance teams have found a sense of relief with QGenda's support," she said. "Before, it would take them one to two months to do the rent reporting, but we're continuing to optimize these processes and are aiming to have it done in about a week."
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
"The biggest piece of advice I'd offer to an organization considering exam room management technology is to really find a vendor that offers a single system for multiple needs," Duarte said. "For us, that meant a vendor that could not only give us support with exam room management, but one that also helped with physician and technician scheduling, even if we didn't know we needed that at first.
"Physician and technician scheduling was also a manual process that goes hand in hand, so having them together increases the efficiency of scheduling for both," she continued.
When implementing this type of technology, truly lean into the data and insight it can provide – without doing so, one might be overlooking ways to save the organization a significant amount of money that doesn't take away from physicians and, most importantly, patients, she concluded.
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