How Healthcare Answering Service Automation Helped Her Pediatric Practice Grow

Background

Dr. Katherine Noble, M.D. (“Dr. Katy”), is the founder and managing partner of Sound Beach Pediatrics, serving families in lower Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Westchester County, New York, for over nine years. Her passion for healthcare communication systems began when she realized technology could help her launch, manage, and grow her practice more efficiently.

In 2016, Dr. Katy implemented PerfectServe’s medical answering service, known as Practice Communication, quickly seeing how it streamlined HIPAA-compliant messaging and improved after-hours call management. She found the app easy to use, reducing stress and minimizing communication errors by bypassing human operators. The ability to review recorded calls and contact information added further value. When her local hospital adopted PerfectServe, she was excited to seamlessly align the hospital’s on-call schedule with her practice’s template.

"Taking calls is a very critical piece of my practice,” Dr. Katy said. “[Calls] can create stress and disruption. Any cost-effective way to reduce that burden can improve physician quality of life and our ability to recruit new providers."

—Dr. Katherine Noble | Founder of Sound Beach Pediatrics

Challenge

PerfectServe helped Sound Beach Pediatrics handle the increasing number of inbound after-hours calls without difficulty. As Dr. Katy’s practice grew, she hired more physicians to support her patient load. She quickly realized that an advanced practice scheduling solution would be needed to create more complex pediatric schedules for her providers, which included on-call and hospital rounding shifts. Patients also expressed a desire to schedule appointments further in advance, so the scheduling solution needed to be intelligent, versatile, and easy to use.

Dr. Katy needed a solution that could also:

• Balance the call schedule, including weekend coverage and holidays
• Prevent gaps in patient care and minimize mistakes
• Accommodate customizable physician schedules based on physician preferences, such as preferred number of shifts a week or preferred days off each month
• Guarantee an appropriate balance between physician and clinical support staff schedules
• Empower the nurse manager to manage shifts for an increasing number of part-time nurses and medical assistants
• Integrate with the existing answering service to ensure phone calls after hours were always directed to the correct provider on call

In 2018, she implemented PerfectServe’s physician scheduling software in her own practice. She took comfort in knowing this system was used with great success by her residency program at a large children's hospital. The software allowed her to optimize provider schedules and ensure equity and transparency in the on-call schedule.

"[The integration] is an efficient, clean method to organize call. It’s easy for families to use and easy for physicians to use," Dr. Katy said. "I think the pricing has been very fair. I feel like I’m getting a great value [from PerfectServe]."

—Dr. Katherine Noble | Founder of Sound Beach Pediatrics

Conclusion

With the power of automated pediatric scheduling software at her fingertips, Dr. Katy sees everything from a bird’s-eye view as a practice owner. She can make wise scheduling decisions for her growing practice while improving staff and physician satisfaction with better communication processes.

For patients, calling the practice is stress free. They know they’ll be guided to the right destination, whether they’ve got an urgent or non-urgent issue to discuss. This is a real-life example of how healthcare technology and automation can make it easier for medical professionals to do their jobs while improving access to care for patients.

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