Challenge
In Australia, though healthcare is universally available to citizens, there are a few hoops one must jump through in order to take advantage of these programs. Umbo exists as a for profit business that invests 50% of its profits back into the community in order to make access to healthcare programs available to the disadvantaged. Umbo’s focus is on Speech Pathology and occupational therapy. They work with people of all ages, however, they are particularly focused on providing therapy solutions for children whose needs are often more pressing for their development.
In the past, finding the right provider for the client has been a task that involves hours of research and cross referencing in order to find the right fit for each patient. Therapy is not a one time appointment, it is a recurring appointment that happens monthly, bi-weekly, or even weekly. These appointments also must be scheduled and in the past this scheduling has all been handled manually.
Each appointment that is booked in Umbo’s system produces an email confirmation to the patient. If ten appointments have been booked at one time, the patient receives ten individual emails for confirmation. Should any adjustments to the patients therapy sessions need to be made, again, each appointment must then be adjusted as producing recurring appointments in their existing system would cause each and every appointment to be changed.
All of this manual research and scheduling equals hours upon hours of wasted administrative time that cuts into Umbo’s bottom line, thus reducing the amount of profits Umbo has available to invest in their community to make healthcare available.
“Each dollar saved and reinvested equates to a child being able to receive the care they need.”
Piroska Bisits-Bullen
Head of Data, Technology & Growth
Solution
SUMO was the perfect solution for Umbo. Two of SUMO’s features in particular had an immediate application for their needs: Assignment Engine and Calendar API.
SUMO’s Assignment Engine pools available providers and their specialties together and will automatically assign the right therapist for the patient instantly. This eliminates hours of cross referencing and research from Umbo’s process thus freeing up admin costs and increasing overall profits and efficiency.
SUMO’s Calendar API was another useful feature that helped faculty and staff save time and drastically improved productivity. Powered by REST API, the Calendar offers a number of unique services such as aggregating time availability in real-time. With the new calendar interface, coordinators were able to see a full list of booked appointments by the user, appointment time slot, and appointment type. Canceling and rescheduling were also done in real-time without the risk of losing valuable time slots or resources. Again, this feature freed up hours of admin costs and increased overall profits.
Results
Today, Umbo has seen their overall profits, and thereby their available capital to invest back into the community increase. Where time related to scheduling is concerned, simply integrating SUMO Scheduler into their process has reduced that time by 90% which equates to 7 hours per week for practice managers. As Piroska told us, “Each dollar saved and reinvested equates to a child being able to receive the care they need.”
Not only is Umbo making a difference today by providing services for those in need, they are making a difference in the lives of their patients by helping them to maximize their potential as they are able to live more independent lives through the improvements they see thanks to the occupational and speech therapy they receive.
