Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Jessica Waycaster, CEO at VREasyWait:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to your company?
A: VREasyWait was launched as a free tool during the pandemic to help physicians enable contactless patient intake in a manner that was compliant with patient privacy regulations. They would schedule an appointment online, and then receive a link to a smartphone-friendly form via text and email to enter their personal details, medication history, allergies etc. They could also make payment and provide any notes for the physician to consider prior to their visit. And on the day of the appointment, they could wait outside and see their place in line, and be informed via text message when it was their turn to enter the office, so that when they arrived for their appointment, they felt like a VIP because they would have no wait time. They would go straight to the exam room.
Physicians began to love the efficiency with which they could see patients, while implementing social distance protocols in place between patients and staff. They also loved that data from the patient intake forms would automatically be populated in the electronic health records (EHR) system. This saved physicians and their staff a lot of time because they would not have to manually enter any data, and could only focus on helping patients with key pieces of data that they forgot to enter or did not know how to enter.
As the pandemic waned and the recovery started, there was a huge backlog of elective surgeries that needed to be completed so this required a lot of surgical flow coordination between patients, staff, primary care physicians, insurance companies, labs, operating rooms etc. before the surgeon could finally perform the surgery. VREasyWait’s integrations with EHR systems provided them with the ability to send notifications via field level business rules driven by the data in the EHRs. These notifications enabled all of these tasks to be performed in a timely manner. If tasks were taking longer than scheduled, staff and supervisors would receive notifications, so that they could avoid delays in surgery.
Now, we find physicians, clinics and hospitals are using VREasyWait’s flexibility in creative ways to make the patient experience as smooth as possible. Every physician has their own way of working that makes them great. EHR systems help them in many ways but these systems are implemented in a one-size-fits-all manner. VREasyWait enables the next layer of flexibility for physicians that enables them to use the data in the EHR in a manner that makes their practice function more efficiently and provide more effective care for patients.
Q: Any highlights on your recent announcement?
A: The key highlight is that we are seeing efficiency improvements of more than 18% and patient satisfaction scores climbing steadily in every key category. For example, patients are often annoyed when staff forget to ask about their medication history or allergies etc. Now this never happens because VREasyWait does it for them and notifies staff when there is a potential issue.
Amidst the skilled healthcare labor shortage that is persisting everywhere, we are also seeing physicians love the fact that we have our own team of medical assistants that can fill in any gaps via a 24×7 contact center. Traditionally, these contact centers would simply take a message and the physicians staff would have to solve the issue. Now, our staff are able to solve key issues like rescheduling patient visits, ensuring call backs in a timely manner etc.
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Q: Can you give us more insights into your offering?
A: 1000s of surgical procedures performed in the office setting are transitioning to ambulatory surgery centers. A lot of clinical and administrative workflows are being impacted because of this transition and physicians want to have the agility and flexibility to be able to improve their workflows by using EHR functionality wherever possible, or using EHR data in VREasyWait to customize their workflows. Every Physician has a different way of working that maximizes their productivity and VREasyWait enables them to customize their workflows based on whether they are performing procedures in the office setting or ASC setting.
Physicians find it challenging for all their staff to consistently utilize EHR functionality around workqueue scoring, activity code enhancement, simple visit coding, watch list development, and workqueue re-design when necessary. VREasyWait overcomes these challenges by implementing customized algorithms for each of these that help their team stay consistently aligned with best practices.
EHR data is integral to the daily tasks the care team performs. However, physicians find it challenging to ensure that everyone in the practice uses EHR functionality consistently to stay on top of their task list. VREasyWait enables them to develop workflows that allows team members to mark a message for follow-up on a future date, then divert that message to a “holding pen” folder. On the specified date, the message reappears as a new message in their inbox to prompt the appropriate follow-up. After seeing a patient in the office, the physician may ask the medical assistant to put in a future note to follow up with the family in two days. That allows the team to stay on top of the clinical situation and/or catch a worsening situation before it gets out of hand. These types of follow-up calls also greatly increase patient and family satisfaction, while increasing provider productivity.
Q: What can we expect from your company in the next 6 months? What are your plans?
A: Currently we have a few 100 customized algorithms and workflows that are triggered based on EHR data. We expect this number to grow to 1000s over the next 6 months as more and more physicians, clinics and hospitals use VREasyWait’s flexibility to design workflows that make each physician individually great while working as part of a larger team. We expect that patient, staff and physician satisfaction scores will continue to improve together as VREasyWait continues to improve the patient, staff and physician experience.
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Q: What is the best thing about your company that people might not know about?
A: Physicians, clinics and hospitals don’t know that they can get a lot of benefits from VREasyWait’s free version itself. They don’t actually have to buy VREasyWait’s premium features if they don’t want to. As an example, Dr. Valenzuela of Washington Heights Urology was cynical at first about all of VREasyWait’s capabilities. So he conducted a free pilot of VREasyWait and was delighted with the results.
One of the main benefits of VREasyWait he experienced with the free version was the ability for patients to bypass the waiting room. Patients could complete their registrations and pay the company prior to arrival. The patient was informed when it was their turn to enter the office, greeted at the door and escorted directly to an exam room. Patients and staff were no longer frustrated by the uncertainty about when they would be called in. As Dr. Valenzuela’s clinic becomes busier and his need for space grows, the waiting room space can be reduced and used in a more productive manner. Ultimately the waiting room can be reduced to a smaller space. A concierge MA can receive the patient and escort them directly to an exam room or office depending on the level of the visit. By using VREasyWait, the secretary would not even need to notify the MA when a patient arrives because once the exam room is ready, the MA would send out the message to the patient with one click and ask them to enter the office, and greet them at the entrance. While the patient waits they can watch a video about Dr. Valenzuela and the services he provides, the benefits for patients etc. Keeping the patient engaged with relevant content during their wait time gives the patient a sense of being part of a concierge-quality service. This is especially useful for highly specialized practices.
Dr. Valenzuela was able to reduce the wait time for new patients to less than 5 min from arrival and registration. For established patients presenting for follow-up, or discussion of upcoming surgical intervention, the wait time was less than 2 min. Although Dr. Valenzuela already has a centralized appointment center, and call service, they are not very effective towards improving the patient experience because they simply take a message, and the physician’s staff have to do the rest. VREasyWait provides MAs with EHR experience who can make scheduling changes 24×7 at a lower cost and quicker response time, thereby improving the patient experience. VREasyWait’s patient reminder system also helped Dr. Valenzuela reduce the number of phone calls while providing a higher quality service.
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