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    BLOG / SOLUTIONS · REAL-TIME SCHEDULING

    REAL-TIME SCHEDULING FOR THE FIELD HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY



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    4 min. reading time

      22 August 2022  ·     James Alex Waldron
    V isiting Healthcare Technicians and Home Health Nursing professionals must focus on what matters most in the field – providing quality, on-time appointments with exacting skills and equipment. Whilst scheduling operations must work with precision and agility, professionals in the field need support through speed and simplicity.

    The technology should be equally agile, aware of the value you offer your clients and in turn, add value to your scheduling teams in real-time. This post highlights recent developments in the sector and where real-time field software controls risk, to design an improved performance.

    REAL-TIME SCHEDULING TO MEET MODERN REQUIREMENTS

    In the last decade, home healthcare providers have learned the importance of reliable scheduling and the support software provides to service last-minute patient visits (field appointments). Persistent factors such as a patient’s availability and emergency call outs remain.

    These, however, are met by new operational issues such as:

    • Shortages of medicines creating repeat deliveries
    • Low skills availability means overworking and is delaying hiring
    • Increased fuel and vehicle costs
    • Telecare/app scheduling with a consistent assigned professional

    It's these day-to-day dispatch tasks that must be solved before commercial teams may consider scalability. This has changed how pharmacy delivery and care/nursing scheduling teams evaluate field scheduling software, and the willingness of the solution's developer to mirror their unique requirements. As healthcare field services have evolved towards an on-demand experience, large and mid-sized providers must move to a real-time, integrated digital ecosystem to match.

    Recent rising workloads in field healthcare services are created through:

    • Providers cutting risk through strict facilities management – less likely to offer appointments in a formal health setting
    • Authorities clearing hyper-local backlogs – this includes screening and dentisty through pop-up, vehicle-based clinics
    • B2B vaccination services such as corporate flu jabs in greater demand – vastly increased scheduling for teams of qualified professionals to visit an office location
    • Retailers moving into in-home optical testing – inexperienced dispatch managers are trying field scheduling with little technical support

    WHAT ARE MODERN FIELD HEALTHCARE CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS?

    Just as real-time technologies have existed in the e-commerce sector for many years, patients have now begun to accept and utilise digital options as customers of modern healthcare services. Whilst the nature of on-demand answers has sped diagnosis and treatment, advertising and word-of-mouth has lead to ever-growing waves of 'new customers' looking to take advantage of a more 'democratic access' to healthcare services in the field:

    • Choice – non-critical treatment, delivery, and service on their schedule
    • Streamlined experience – requesting appointments in as few clicks as possible
    • Proactive monitoring – just as diabetes patients can test at home, patients expect their equipment to self-diagnose
    • Transparency – real-time ETA for in-person visits and deliveries


    BAYWATER HEALTHCARE CURES LOGISTICAL SCHEDULING

    How do you solve the complex planning of depot and patient visits? The answer: Real-time, precise planning of time-critical maintenance orders and automation of the entire resource planning process. The result: Realisation of individual appointment time windows and route optimisation based on the real driving speeds.

    Working in real time to serve more than 30,000 patients across the UK.

    GET THE STORY ›


    WHAT IS REAL-TIME SCHEDULING IN FIELD HEALTHCARE?

    The backdrop of recent operational pressures matched with modern customer expectations can be solved through real-time optimisation. Often, this is using your existing resources with efficient cost- and skills-based scheduling and route planning.

    In planning workflows, moving to an optimised scheduling platform and a real-time field app provides:

    • Geocoded appointment location – ending time wasted searching around Post Codes
    • Overlapped service ranges – opening previously-hidden alternative schedules and routes
    • Regulated skills and medicines/tools required for the visit automatically factored
    • Vehicle availability and type – whether the field visit must be offered by healthcare workers’ own car, or a fleet vehicle (and the required storage capacity)
    • Actual time of day driving speeds – real-world data to calculate the travel time between appointments
    • In-day re-optimisation – within seconds to account for unplanned availability/traffic conditions/missing supplies
    • Cost-optimisation – allowing head-office to add/subtract new operational rules with SLA compliance factored in real time

    Healthcare professionals and medical technicians both receive live instructions to their field service app. With mutual agreement this also provides the opportunity for your field employees to begin their shifts from home addresses, saving unnecessary fuel use to an office/warehouse. As discussed, it's often the case that healthcare visitors now operate telecare appointments – and these must take place in a supervised clinical environment.

    These appointments and their associated travel time are factored in to ensure the windows offered are optimised.

    In the patient/customer workflow, moving to an optimised appointment scheduling software and booking portal provides the integrated self-service customer portal (or call centre), a pre-optimised appointment window. The appointment is selected and this data may be twinned into a CRM through the back office. (This includes emergency appointments which are created - not just set aside 'just in case').

    What is happening in the background?

    • FLS VISITOUR calculated with all parameters as described above
    • The algorithm created availability at the earliest time (according to the best outcome)
    • The dispatcher had the option to proceed with the proposed time
    • The customer was satisfied to be offered a menu of appointment windows
    • In-day re-optimisation for all field employees with live ETA tracking for the customer
    • For maximum transparency, the field employee has the account and case history available, a photo of either the completed work, and/or sign-on-glass is linked back to the work order and written into the CRM

    Take this lesson from the Insurance Industry about how to deploy a Field Office within hours, here: Reacting in Real Time

    Read more about in-built tools to assist Compliance, Regulation, and Traceability here:
    FLS Industry - Healthcare & Medical Engineering

    CONTROL COSTS AND IMPROVE STANDARDS WITH REAL-TIME SCHEDULING SOFTWARE

    To gain an understanding of tools to optimise the field experience and manage risk for your workforce and patients book a short discussion or contact us at info@fastleansmart.com.


    Read more:
    Strengthen Field Service Optimisation with an Ecosystem model
    Cost control: Reactive maintenance with Field Service Management software
    Field force security with Field Service Safety software

    ‹  Back to overview
    FLS Author James Waldron

    Author
    JAMES ALEX WALDRON
    UK Marketing Manager

    +44(0) 1183 800189
    Send Email  ›

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      Start  ›  REAL-TIME SCHEDULING FOR THE FIELD HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

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