Healthengine was delighted to have Balwyn Doctors – one of Melbourne’s highly-rated local GP practices – back on board in 2020 to support them through challenging transitions and enormous growth since opening their COVID-19 clinic. In a short time, they’ve added three doctors, three nurses and four part-time reception staff to the team. They’ve also opted in for extra Healthengine Practice Efficiency Suite (now included in GP Complete) features, including the COVID-19 vaccine booking solution, to handle the upsurge to 3,600+ online patient bookings and 2,000+ new patient forms every month.
”“There’s always a friendly helping hand at Healthengine to assist us at any time. Nothing ever seems like it’s too much trouble. They were particularly obliging in offering our staff training to learn the recalls system, which is a great time-efficient service included in our monthly fee. And when we switched on the new patient forms six months ago, I’m so glad we did! We went from 144 new patient forms in April to 3,067 in August! It’s been a massive time-saver.”
Paula DaveyPractice Manager - Balwyn Doctors
Stats snapshot
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- Bookings – 1,307 patient bookings through Healthengine every month*
- New patients – 833 new patients per month, 24% via the Healthengine app and website*
- Recalls & Reminders – 1,677 sent per month*
- Time savings – 2,000+ new online patient forms pre-filled per month^
- New patient growth – More than 2,000%**
- Reviews – 99% would recommend this practice – from 910 patient reviews^^
- Love -– Healthengine’s responsive and innovative customer success manager
** 6 months Apr-Aug 2021
^ 3-month average Jul-Sep 2021
^^ From patient reviews over 12 months (2020/21)
When experienced medical board member and practice manager Paula Davey joined the Balwyn Doctors team in 2020, the practice had just switched to another online booking system after using Healthengine for patient bookings and recalls for several years. The first thing Paula did was switch Balwyn Doctors over to Best Practice management software and bring them back to Healthengine.
“I already had a really good relationship with our Healthengine Customer Success Manager, Chris Hopkins, who had been so supportive of my practice at William Street,” says Paula.
“Healthengine is a very effective and efficient online booking system and, more crucially, Balwyn Doctors had established a 100% rating on Healthengine from hundreds of patient reviews. You can’t buy that patient testimony for love nor money. It’s gold! Why would we throw that away? So I was delighted when the team agreed to return to Healthengine on my recommendation and I was able to make the call to Chris and say we’re coming back!”
Why Healthengine?
When Paula was initially seeking an online booking system for her privately owned practice in early 2017, the deciding factor was which platform would put her practice at the top of the search results when patients were online looking for a GP in the city.
“Five years on, I’m managing a new practice and Healthengine is still coming up trumps in the search engine rankings, so whenever anyone is searching for a new practice in our area we are always visible,” says Paula. “We’re on one of the most basic offerings, but we’re getting great results, with no charge at all for the 2,000+ new patient bookings we’re currently getting each month through our COVID-19 clinic.”
“But what I’ve really come to value is our customer success manager, Chris. He isn’t there to just take my call and say thanks for your feedback, I’ll get back to you. Chris is so innovative in the way he offers help.
“In fact, with everyone I’ve dealt with at Healthengine, there’s always been acknowledgement that they don’t necessarily know everything. They have a genuine interest in what’s going on out in the world of general practice and are open to suggestions about different ways of doing things. They’ve got a kind of Silicone Valley vitality about them!”
Responding to a rapidly evolving vaccine roll-out
When Healthengine was chosen by the Federal Government to build the Commonwealth Booking Platform and help get Australia vaccinated, we worked hard to make it as quick and easy as possible for practices to set up their vaccine clinics and get appointments up online.
With the vaccination program still in its early phase and government policies rapidly changing in response to the evolving pandemic, the vaccine booking system required constant updates with little time for testing. So, inevitably, there were some improvements to be made that Healthengine worked quickly and collaboratively to get smoothed out so Balwyn Doctors could get more sleeves rolled up.
“Chris was always so grateful for the feedback and very respectfully set up a meeting with Healthengine’s team of senior programmers, so I could explain directly to them the impacts these improvements would make to primary health. It was so refreshing to talk directly with the people doing the work to develop these systems we rely on,” says Paula.
Eligibility checked, new patient forms complete and recalls sent
A timely response and collaborative approach meant Healthengine’s developers were able to rapidly rectify inconsistent patient information from the New Patient Forms fields, and ensure all patients making additional COVID-19 vaccine bookings on behalf of family members went through the online eligibility checker for every vaccine booking.
“There’s always a friendly helping hand at Healthengine to assist us at any time. Nothing ever seems like it’s too much trouble,” says Paula. “They were particularly obliging in offering our staff training to learn the Recalls system, which is a great time-efficient service included in our monthly fee. And when we switched on the new patient forms six months ago, I’m so glad we did! We went from 144 new patient forms in April to 3,067 in August – an increase of more than 2,000% due to our COVID-19 vaccination bookings. It’s been a massive time-saver!”
Streamlining gets six COVID-19 vaccines done every 15 minutes
With Healthengine’s COVID-19 vaccine booking system, New Patient Forms and Reminders streamlining the whole process, Balwyn’s COVID-19 clinical team of one doctor and one of their three nurses is now able to book six patients in every 15 minutes. They’ve been registering over 50 new patients a day and in the last month alone, approximately 1,300 Pfizer vaccines were administered, making great headway towards that all-important 80% double-dose target.
“As a practice manager, my role is to ensure our doctors, nurses and receptionists are happy in their work, and that their workdays are as comfortable as possible from an administrative perspective,” says Paula. “They have a very important role to play in our community, especially as we all face the extra pressure and challenges that COVID-19 brings. Having that responsive support from Healthengine has meant a lot.”
Further growth beyond COVID-19
As well as pathology coming back to the clinic five days a week, Balwyn’s newest doctor brings prenatal and antenatal care to complement the practice’s growing list of specialist services, including skin care and sexual health services.
“With Healthengine we’re able to easily add new doctors and nominate any of the specialty services our practitioners offer. And because we get really good exposure in online search results through Healthengine, when locals put ‘prenatal care near me’ into their search, our available appointments will be instantly visible online for bookings,” says Paula.
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