Sauk Prairie Healthcare is an independent rural facility comprised of a hospital. We have outlying regional family medicine clinics, as well as specialty practices here in the building. We also have a birth center and a total joint center here. So, the tipping point for us in realizing we needed to make a change was we started to get actual formal patient complaints come through, we can’t get through to your office, I’ve called five times.
We have been live with Clarus since October 10 of this year, we were experiencing anywhere from six to 10,000 phone calls a month, we have been able to reduce that to about 2500 phone calls a month. The reason for that is patients aren’t calling back repeatedly. There were times towards the end before we went live with Clarus, where it was taking us two to three business days to return a call to a patient. Now with Clarus, we have been able to reduce that to same day within two to three hours. So, we were able to reduce the call volume. We were able to avoid having to hire two full time people to help us with our registration of patients and managing these phone calls.
So that’s a huge savings. I think for myself as an administrator, it has made my professional life easier in the terms of I’m not having to field patient complaints and patient phone calls. I’m not, you know, hearing from staff how unhappy and you know, stressed they are. Clarus has improved patient care here at Sauk Prairie Healthcare because we’re able to address their concerns quicker. So, if somebody does call postoperatively and has a sign of an infection or has questions about incision care, we’re able to get back to them right away. And if it’s something that needs to be seen, we’re able to have them come into the office the same day.
From a provider standpoint, the benefit of Clarus to them has been just being able to get to those elevated phone calls from patients in a more timely manner. I was talking to one of the staff and she looked at me and she said Kelly, I will work here any day of the week now. I love it. She said you have no idea what this has done for us at the front desk. This is a game changer.
