Laurie,
I already know about this hack your practice is successfully using, but why don’t you share how your patients let you know that they have arrived.
Robin
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Sure! We use the tablesready app to communicate with our patients when they arrive. This is an app that lots of restaurants use. The night before we load the next days appointments and an hour before the appointment time, the parent gets a text that says “We are expecting them at their appointment at X time. Please text back to this number when you arrive to our parking lot. Please remain in your car.” When they arrive and text that they are here, our front desk receptionist sees the notification and starts the check in process which includes COVID screening questions. These questions are in a text expander so it doesn’t take long for her to respond to each person. If there is a balance, she calls the patients and collects over the phone. Then the patients waits in the car and we are ready to see them, we text to meet us at our front door. This is also how we communicate to our sick patients coming in for an exam or swab from telehealth. We text them a time to come and to text when they arrive. Then we can notify them where to meet us. It’s been a great process to communicate to our patients.
Some have asked how we communicate in the office about when a nurse is ready for the patient, etc. We use PCC and we have status buttons. We added buttons saying PAGE-Main Waiting Room. When nurse is ready, she changes the patient’s status and the receptionist knows to page the patient. When she pages the patient, she changes the status to PAGED so the nurse now knows to make her way to the front door to meet her patient.
Happy to answer any questions anyone may have!
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How/who does your remote checkin? Who unlocks the door once they’re checked in?
Currently our checkin sits outside and checks people in but in about a week it will be too hot for that so trying to find a plan B.
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@doktoreliza We use a third party vendor for remote check in (Phreesia) and then we use instant messaging inside our EHR to communicate when a patient is ready— the receptionist is working remotely from home; the office doors are locked; families wait in their car until they are told by the receptionist that the clinical staff is ready for them and they can go to the door ( we open all doors for the families and make sure they don’t pass each in the hallways).
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Look at LauriC’s above. Her practice is using the “tablesready” app.
I have really enjoyed using the doximity app for Telemedicine visits. Text and then boom, ready for the call.
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Have you or anyone elase,received any payments for Video visits, from commercial or medicaid insurers.
Yes, from everyone so far. (KY is a parity state, even pre-Covid)
Robin
great resource! we were about to try it, but now PCC going to have the ability in next update to text patients from the system, so will probably do that instead. have created new status of “parking lot” so they call when they are downstairs, reception will update the status, then the MA will text w room # when they are ready for the patient (we are pretty small)
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great changes on the fly! wish we were big enough to separate out a sick area but alas…
we did have great results with allowing our biller to work from home initially (she is high risk) and will probably have her do more if things flare up again. all our receptionists are set up to work remotely now, but we have them in office as we have more “live” visits. some work better than others…
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I was just trying to figure out this workflow this morning as we beta test the new text feature. Thanks for saving my need to think it out!
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@lauriec are you still liking the tablesready app? We just started a 14 day free trial so we can play around with it.
Yes we are! Feel free to email me directly or call me with any quesitons! laurie@pearlandpediatrics.com or 281-485-9990.
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@lauriec thank you! our Operations Manager settled on using a new 2-way texting feature that Phreesia just rolled out (that’s the remote check in vendor we use), so we are testing that out this week.
We are mimicking the tablesready app- sending a text that morning asking parent to let us know when they arrive in the parking lot and then texting them to let them know when they are ready.
Yesterday was the first day and it went very smoothly, except for the mom who gave her toddler the phone to play with while they were waiting 
Thank you so much for the offer to help- it means a lot!
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Thanks so much for your help. I did a one day trial of Tablesready today. It did work, but it was labor intensive as it is not integrated with our EHR, so we will not be using it going forward. Does anyone use a program like this that is fully integrated with EPIC EHR?
What EHR are you using that has instant messaging built in?
Office Practicum has CurbSide integrated into the EHR and it does not cost additional monthly. We switched over from the desktop ap we had been using from Verizon Business
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