Multi-location Scheduling

The caller rarely knows which office they dialed

A group with several offices usually publishes one number, or several numbers that all ring the same desk. Patients mention the office near their work, the one they went to last time, or the one by the hospital. Providers rotate between sites on different days.

A scheduler who has worked there for years untangles this without thinking. A new hire, or anyone covering at the busy hour, books the right provider at the wrong building.

One rule set per facility

Each eClinicalWorks facility gets its own rules. Katie asks which office the caller wants, or, if they have no preference, offers the locations where the visit is available, and books at the site they choose.

Writing these down per site often exposes small differences that staff have been carrying in their heads, such as one office closing early on Fridays or one site that never books physicals. Once they are rules, they apply on every call.

• Office hours for each site
• Which providers work at each location, and on which days
• Visit types offered only at certain sites, such as procedures or imaging
• The transfer line for each front desk

Saying the location out loud

Wrong-site bookings are mostly misunderstandings. Katie repeats the office name with the date and time before the call ends, so a patient who meant the other office says so then, not from the wrong waiting room.

It helps to give each site a name patients actually use. If everyone calls your second office the one on Main Street, that is what the rules should call it too.

Calls that belong to one site

Some calls are about a place, not a provider: a lab drop-off question, a parking question, a fax for a specific office. Those route by location too, so the summary lands with the staff at that office rather than in a central pile.

With MedReception Autopilot, the summary is filed to the patient's chart in eClinicalWorks whichever site handles the follow-up, so every office sees the same history when the patient next calls or walks in.

Balancing the sites

Multi-site groups often discover that one office is overbooked while another has open time the same week. When a caller has no strong preference, offering every location where the visit is available spreads demand across the group without anyone having to manage it by hand. Patients who do care about location still get the office they asked for.