PetalMD's Top 10 Contributions to the Healthcare Community in 2018

This year, PetalMD's contributions to the healthcare community have not gone unnoticed. The company has won numerous awards such as Best Healthcare Solution at the Channel Innovation Awards, IT Healthcare Company of the Year at the Medlys Awards and the Optimization of an Innovation Technology award at the 2018 TELUS Health Innovation Gala.

What's behind all this acclaim? Here are 10 contributions from PetalMD that give an overview of the benefits of digital innovations for physicians, managers and various other participants in the healthcare system.

1. More and more Canadian healthcare institutions are going digital to improve their processes

In 2018, PetalMD and Microsoft worked closely together to help Canadian healthcare institutions adopt new technologies, a collaboration that led to a feature article in the prestigious Healthcare Global Magazine. Today more than 65 new Canadian hospital departments have gone digital to better manage their schedules, increasing the total number of health professionals registered on the PetalMD platform to 40,000.

In Canada, many medical clinics have facilitated patient access to healthcare by offering online appointment booking and automated appointment reminders. New hospitals have digitized their on-call list and schedules to reduce communication times with on-call physicians and thus improve patient care in emergency departments. This trend towards digitization allows physicians to spend more time with their patients, and aids healthcare institutions in optimizing their processes.

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2. Quebec physicians can now automate their RAMQ medical billing

In the late spring of 2018, PetalMD announced that it was acquiring Xacte, a well-established online medical billing company in Quebec. To date, more than 2,000 physicians and 400 optometrists use Xacte daily and this number continues to grow.

The synergy between the schedule management solution developed by PetalMD and the Xacte medical billing solution saves physicians more time. By connecting their PetalMD calendar to Xacte's billing grid, physicians no longer have to manually re-enter the information, since much of the data is transferred automatically along with the corresponding amount (on-call, meetings, supervision and rates for specialties). New developments in 2018, such as the automatic digitization of HINs on the Xacte mobile app, also reduce the administrative burden on physicians, as well as eliminating billing errors and thus payment refusals.

3. In Europe, hospitals are beginning to centralize their on-call schedules on a single platform

Throughout the year, PetalMD has deployed its on-call list management solution in eight European hospitals, in Switzerland, France and Belgium. One of these institutions, the Centre hospitalier Le Vinatier, worked with our team to produce a case study titled Simplify the Planning and Management of On-Call Physicians to illustrate how the platform developed by PetalMD saved time for all parties.

When a hospital digitizes and centralizes its on-call schedules, the physicians and hospital staff save hundreds of hours each year. In France, interest in this technology was such that, in early fall, Projetlys announced a partnership with PetalMD to implement the solution in a number of hospitals in France.

4. Medical clinics have facilitated access to healthcare while saving more than 20,000 hours

This year alone, more than 146,567 appointments have been booked on the Petal Booking online portal. Considering that a single telephone appointment takes an average of 2.7 minutes to process by medical clinic administrative staff, this means that some 6,595 hours have been saved. In addition, 543,334 automated appointment reminders have been sent this year. Since the average time required to make a telephone appointment reminder call is estimated at 90 seconds, the equivalent of 13,583 additional hours have been saved.

In addition to reducing the number of missed appointments, this technology has freed up even more administrative staff time while improving the patient experience. Also in 2018, PetalMD launched its automated check-in system, which allows patients to report their arrival at the clinic on their own by entering their health insurance number. This gives clinic staff even more time to devote to patients or to perform value-added tasks for physicians.

5. Dozens of New Brunswick healthcare facilities have digitized their on-call schedules

Are you familiar with the Vitalité Health Network? This is a large group of healthcare institutions with nearly 600 physicians distributed throughout 57 points of service in New Brunswick. The network's mission is to continuously improve healthcare delivery and ensure the best possible access to it within its territory.

In 2018, Vitalité Health Network’s management chose to standardize and consolidate the schedules of on-call physicians at its various points of service using the Petal On-Call solution developed by PetalMD. Through these measures, the network aims to optimize patient care, from hospital admission to post-operative follow-up.

6. Leaders in the digital health field have benefited from PetalMD's experience and expertise

Contributing to the healthcare field also means sharing your knowledge and expertise with digital health leaders in order to facilitate technological modernization and the adoption of innovation by different organizations. In 2018, our CEO Patrice Gilbert and our Director of Innovation Francis Robichaud were invited to numerous events as expert speakers, where they were pleased to share their knowledge and experience.

Canadian events to which PetalMD was invited as an expert in 2018

• National Forum on Patient Experience 2018, conférence (Toronto)
• Santé+Numérique Québec, conference (Québec City)
• Congrès des services de 1ère ligne, panel discussion (Montreal)
• HealthTech Connect, round table (Toronto)
• 8th National Next in Health Research Micro-Summit – Executive Summit, conféeence (Vancouver)
• Colloque Informatique Santé, conference + workshop (Drummondville)
• JIQ l’événement affaires & TI, conférence (Quebec City)
• L’École d'entrepreneuriat de Québec, conférence (Québec)
• InnoveAction, workshop (Montréal)
• 12e Forum de l’industrie de la santé, panel discussion (Quebec city)
  
  

Other events that PetalMD attended

• Paris Healthcare Week (France)
• 2018 National Capital General Surgery Symposium
• 2018 National Capital Conference on Emergency Medicine
• Canada’s Med Tech Conference presented by MEDEC
• Canadian Conference on Physician Leadership
• 15th Annual Pediatric Emergency Medicine Update
• eHealth Conference & Trade shows - National Health Leadership Conference
• Canadian Surgery Forum
• 6th Annual National Forum on Patient Experience
• Canadian Association of Paediatric Surgeons (CAPS) 50th Annual Meeting
• Telus HEALTH Collaboration Conference
• SOQIBS 

7. Medical clinics can access analytics dashboards, as well as key data on their activities

In early 2018, PetalMD launched its analytics dashboards to provide medical clinic managers with access to strategic data on their operations. Available from the interface of the Petal Booking appointment management system, these analytics dashboards provide, for example, a quantitative picture of patient wait times, busiest times, most used appointment channels, appointment requests in excess of available time slots, and much more.

Employed judiciously, the data provided by these dynamic reports can be used to improve access to healthcare by helping managers to make informed decisions. To learn more about the data made available, please download the document Analytics Dashboards for Medical Clinics.

8. More than 1,400 physicians were consulted in the development of new technological innovations

In 2018, PetalMD consulted widely with its physician users in the development of new technological solutions. In total, more than 1,400 physicians participated in surveys, focus groups and individual interviews to help PetalMD develop features that meet the concrete and daily communication needs of the hospital environment.

The verdict? The exercise was very rewarding and will allow PetalMD to launch new technological innovations in 2019 that will greatly simplify communication processes in hospitals, while meeting patient information protection requirements.

9. The number of missed appointments is starting to decline in hospitals

Missed appointments are a real challenge in terms of access to second-line healthcare. In fact, nearly 1 in 10 people don’t show up for their appointment and don’t take the time to cancel. One of the commonest reasons is that they simply forgot, not least because patients often get their appointments several months in advance in second-line care.

Thus, in 2018, PetalMD began offering automated appointment reminders for hospitals, including integration with Logibec. But PetalMD technology offers more than just appointment reminders: patients have access to an online portal where they can check information on their appointments, while hospitals have access to valuable analytical data on the current demand for care at their facility.

10. Physicians have more time to spend with their patients

Once again this year, PetalMD has enabled all its physician users to save thousands of hours by automating the creation, coordination and dissemination of their schedules using artificial intelligence. Rather than having to transcribe information on different platforms and with different tools (paper, fax, fixed telephone, internal email, personal email, Excel files, etc.), physicians using the Petal Scheduling management solution have access to all information centralized in the same place and updated in real time. For more details on this subject, please download the case study How an Automated Schedule Management Solution Helps Emergency Departments.

In 2018, some 363,446 exchanges of physicians' work tasks were carried out using the platform and mobile app developed by PetalMD. Each exchange made via the Petal Scheduling management tool represents a time saving compared to traditional tools, since all the changes are made in real time to the personal and group schedules. By reducing their administrative burden, physicians have more time for their practice and patients.

To learn more about PetalMD

PetalMD designs cutting-edge medical-administrative solutions to manage physician schedules, patient appointments, on-call lists and clinical schedules, medical billing and communication. Do you work in healthcare, and would you like to know how we can help you modernize your processes? Please contact our team.