Athletico Streamlines Referral Management with AlertMD Solutions
Athletico Physical Therapy is one of the nation’s largest physical and occupational therapy providers to communities, employers and athletes in more than 550 clinics throughout 13 states. Services include physical and occupational/hand therapy, workers’ compensation/employer services, athletic training, virtual care and a multitude of specialty programs. Athletico also has a new Home Therapy service offering that relies on Margie from AlertMD (an Updox partner) to help them match patients with therapists to expedite care and streamline referral management.
Prior to Margie, Athletico’s process was entirely manual, creating a time and resource burden for admin staff who were also busy with other tasks. With 15 to 25 new patients and 200 - 250 home visits per week, Athletico needed a way to automate and streamline their patient referral and intake process.
Through Margie, new patients complete a survey via a chat-bot on Athletico’s website to schedule a Home Therapy appointment. A push notification is then sent to participating Athletico therapists in the same geographic area. The first therapist to respond to the notification is assigned to that patient.
“Margie definitely makes the process easier by automating intake and initiate scheduling for us,” says LeeAnn Hulteen, PT, Manager of Home Therapy Services at Athletico. “Prior to this, we were managing referral information manually and had multiple text threads to determine therapists’ availability to accept a patient. The ability to notify therapists on a mass scale about a new referral in the area changes the game for us and reduces the time it takes to match patients with therapists.”
Athletico prides itself on delivering outstanding customer service and their high customer satisfaction survey scores reflect that. “Ensuring excellent service from a patient’s first encounter with our company is essential to building a positive relationship,” says Colin Crawford, PT, Director of Home Therapy Services at Athletico. “With Margie, we’re able to notify therapists of available patients in their area, starting with a streamlined, easy process.”
Athletico began using Margie for Home Therapy scheduling in August 2020. Implementation was smooth. The Margie team hosted training sessions and webinars for Athletico’s clinical and office teams. Patient adoption has been well received, as the Margie survey form was created to be quick and easy.
“AlertMD and Updox have been very easy to work with. They were open to suggestions and allowed us to tweak the workflow to make it fit our service offering. The ability to customize a product to suit our business needs is a big advantage and we’ve always been impressed by their responsiveness,” says Colin.
Increase practice patient intake while improving patient satisfaction
Margie helps businesses convert more referrals and recalls into appointments with automated outreach to increase patient volume. Margie’s automated phone, chat and messaging system can be easily implemented within the practice and supports sending images, videos, and interactive responses to patients for improved engagement. Margie streamlines the referral process to eliminate phone tag and support self-scheduling. Learn more at https://www.alertmd.com/margie.