Case Study – Dr Amrit Pattojoshi Clinic

Appointment scheduling in healthcare has become a major challenge at the present time. Various factors need to be considered like service time availability, patient preferences, and the expertise of scheduling staff. A critical bottleneck lies in keeping track of doctor’s availability manually and conveying the same to patients in real-time.

Medical practitioners also feel that mounting paperwork owing to manual appointment management and medical prescription handling is taking a toll on their productivity.

A famous Physiatrist was also facing similar challenges in appointment scheduling at his clinic. Let’s delve deep into the challenges that he faced while managing his clinic, and how improvisation of automation technology.

The Client

Dr Amrit Pattojoshi is a renowned Physiatrist who runs a clinic in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha. Satisfied with the diagnosis, patients of this famous Physiatrist in Bhubaneshwar didn’t shy away from the good word of mouth spreading.

Soon, the number of appointments increased and the limited staff at his clinic was finding it hard to manage service time availability and patient preferences.

The Business Challenge

A lot of patients used to book appointments at the clinic on a daily basis through the phone call. Managing hundreds of calls manually was not easy for the doctor and his staff every day. He wanted a standard platform where all patient calls can be tracked, and at the same time, his availability can be conveyed. Along with appointment management hurdles, he was also facing other challenges, such as:

• Generic customer queries were consuming a lot of time
• Replies to patients on calls varied with no standardization
• Off-hour queries were getting tougher to handle
• There wasn’t any system to prioritize patient calls
• As the call volume was getting higher, the response time was getting low
• There wasn’t any way to remind patients about their upcoming appointments.

The Solution

After understanding the pain points of Dr Amrit Pattojoshi’s clinic, our sales experts came up with some advanced telephony menu or integrated voice response (IVR) systems, which can automate customer support and help the client thrive with high call volumes. The client finally went with IVR Guru, and is content with these advanced features of the clinic management software:

• 24×7 Patient Care: He got a virtual phone number, through which incoming calls can be forwarded to pre-set phone numbers for round-the-clock service. The software ensured 24X7 availability of customer care experts to attend patients’ calls and schedule appointments. Generic customer queries can now be resolved with automated telephony system, without requiring any customer support representative. Pre-recorded IVR messages can be played to attend patient calls even on holidays and off hours
• Appointment Scheduling: The lead grading system of this software helped in prioritization of appointments based on the criticality of patients. All information regarding callers, such as physical location, contact details, names, etc. can be assimilated with its lead identification and management features. This can be further used for sending appointment reminders via SMS and email.
• Patient History Management: The clinic management system assists in managing medical data of patients, which includes their medication, reading, intake and outtake. The clinic management system further assists in managing history of all patients so that doctors can ensure more accurate diagnosis.

Dr Amrit Pattojoshi couldn’t help but gush over his smart move of investing in the right IVR software – “I always wanted to market my contact number on my website. It feels good when IVR speaks when you call on a number”

Key Learnings

Whether you are in the healthcare sector or exploring growth prospects in some other industry, IVR software can help you improve the customer service quality with standardized and automated voice responses. Remember to consider these factors when investing in IVR software and help your business grow big.

• Customer Service: When all calls can be scanned and forwarded to concerned departments, customers are quite likely to be satisfied with the timely response. So, look for an IVR software that provides the virtual phone number feature for scanning and routing incoming calls to a pre-set phone number where 24*7 availability of customer support is guaranteed.
• Marketing & Communication: IVR technology is now being widely used for marketing purposes, such as communicating with existing customers and making them aware about any new product or service. You can also benefit from this technology trend by investing in an IVR software with lead identification and management features. These features can allow tracking of contact details, and ensure ongoing conversation with prospects and existing customers through emails and SMS.
• Dashboard & Analytics: Check if it provides options for viewing analytics and generating reports. It’s important that the types of data and reports that are useful for your business can be generated through the IVR system you are investing in.

IVR software is the technology of the future which can help businesses become accessible to customers and overcome all limitations in delivering outstanding service.