CUSTOMER STORY

How Cardiff Medical Centre is Reducing Debt & Saving Valuable Time

In New South Wales, Cardiff Medical Centre and Skin Cancer Clinic primarily serves an older demographic, with patients in their 50s and 60s. The clinic has been a cornerstone in the community for years, specialising in skin checks. The team of doctors, dedicated practice management professionals and nurses is committed to providing top-notch healthcare services.

The Challenge

Before implementing online payments as a way to collect and process appointment fees the clinic faced several challenges:

Debt Accumulation: The majority of telehealth appointments completed remained unpaid.

Inefficient Processes: Staff spent a high volume of time chasing payments over the phone.

Limited Telehealth Options: The clinic lacked a sustainable and streamlined process for telehealth consultations and payments.

The Solution: HotDoc Payments

Cardiff Medical Centre and Skin Cancer Clinic were already avid users of HotDoc; the patient engagement platform already helped them to save time and effort across a wide range of services such as recalls and reminder automation. To alleviate the amount of debt and time the clinic undertook a transformative journey by:

Implementing HotDoc Payments: This user-friendly tool automated payment processes, enabling telehealth consultations and payments to go hand in hand.

Leveraging Training & Masterclasses: The Staff underwent training with HotDoc’s learning platform to better understand and implement digital solutions. Having a team of support agents accessible in their dashboard also helped to provide on the spot support for any questions in their training and set up processes.

“It’s so user-friendly. And the support online is great”

Change Management: The Partnered Health group created HotDoc champions that would help enable other sites in their network to also activate and learn how to use Payments effectively. These power users within the clinic helped in the transition, ensuring a smooth changeover to the new systems.

The Results & Benefits

Reduced Debt: The clinic saw a significant reduction in unpaid bills, especially telehealth appointments where previously patients would often be unable to be reached for payment collection over the phone.

Time Savings: Staff now have more time to focus on patient care, saving hours off their end of day procedures that were normally dedicated to chasing up unpaid appointments.

“The last few hours of our day would be chasing patients or trying to fit that in and now with having HotDoc payments turned on we can just send them a quick text message”

Enhanced Patient and Staff Experience: Both patients and staff find the new system more efficient and user-friendly and with the time savings, are empowered to focus more on personalised care and patient experience.

Assistant Practice Manager Dee also explained how patients were weary at the change initially. As part of their change management, they found that educating and reassuring patients on what to expect as part of their appointment helped to increase confidence and transparency around payment requests at the clinic, further adding to their success.

Cardiff Medical Centre and Skin Cancer Clinic continue to see results from using HotDoc Payments on a monthly basis, in just the last 30 days they have processed:

1314 online payment requests
921 practice booked payment requests
37 manual payment requests

With nearly 50% of their appointment types enabled for automatic payments, they have also been able to integrate this with their practice management software to automatically collect and receipt their invoices without needing to reconcile between systems.

Conclusion

Cardiff Medical Centre and Skin Cancer Clinic have successfully navigated the challenges of modern healthcare by embracing digital solutions. Through strategic planning and the implementation of features such as online Payments, they have been able to streamline their processes but also enable seamless telehealth consultations and substantial time savings, allowing staff to focus more on patient care.

As healthcare continues evolving, Cardiff Medical Centre and Skin Cancer Clinic is an inspiring example for other clinics facing similar challenges. Their journey highlights the transformative power of an integrated patient engagement platform, offering a roadmap for others to follow as they work to empower other sites to achieve the same outcomes. The clinic continues its journey to making healthcare accessible and seamless for patients and staff and looks forward to new and exciting improvements to its patient engagement platform.