Infusion Center focused on patient experience discovers the ultimate comfort of managing referrals with LeadingReach

Needles, not known as harbingers of comfort, are the common element of every “spa-like” treatment at Wasatch Infusion, a physician-based outpatient infusion center with five locations across Utah.

Because the mere thought of a needle makes many squeamish, Wasatch Infusion invests in every detail of the patient’s experience to maximize their comfort and elevate their experience to minimize anxiety and pain.

Private suites, luxury recliners, high-speed wifi, TVs with Netflix, free snacks and drinks—it’s all to help patients feel as much at home as possible.

“We want to treat them [our patients] like it’s Nordstrom, Starbucks or Disneyland. Go above
and beyond to ensure that patients have a phenomenal service experience at our facility.” Charlie Schadewald, Wasatch’s CEO, said. “With our one poke philosophy, we hire specialists, our clinicians, nurses and technicians are experts at IV therapy. We’ve kind of made needle phobia go away. Most of the time you don’t even feel it anymore. The products and tools we use are so efficient and effective for accessing the vein making it more comfortable for the patient.”

A fast growing provider, in one of the fastest growing verticals in healthcare, Wasatch Infusion discovered that while they had invested heavily in their in-person patient experience, they needed their pre-appointment and referral process to match their high standard.

“We started with a giant whiteboard, a six foot by four foot marker board on the wall, and we would literally write them down as the faxes came in. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to manage the volume we have today in this way,” Schadewald said. “At one point one team member ordered really thin black tape and sat on the floor and created a giant spreadsheet on this board, and that’s how we would do it. When the fax came in we would write the patient, the drug, the date it came in, and have three separate columns for each step in their status.”

At some point the whiteboard became a digital, collaborative spreadsheet in Google Docs, but Wasatch still found the experience lacking.

“The biggest problem was just the lack of data, not being able to run a report,” Schadewald said. “There is no nice logic tree or software integration in something that lacks a database. You can’t see what is happening or not happening.”

Introduced by a LeadingReach referral from a local physician, Schadewald clicked away from his spreadsheet and knew he’d just been gifted more than just a new patient. Signed up and set up soon after, the team began to input their faxed referrals to test drive LeadingReach as a potential solution.

“It wasn’t until we took every order we were receiving from our traditional fax methods and started to managed with LeadingReach, that we really saw the value of putting everything in one dashboard and starting to track referring physicians and patient adherence, the data and reporting came to life from work we were already doing” Schadewald said.

Now Schadewald had instant access to live reports of how many referrals each location was receiving, and his team had an easier way to update patients statuses and get more patients scheduled.

Now with instant access to the lifeblood of his company, and complete transparency into each step of every referral’s journey, Schadewald is equipped to investigate with data where he can improve their business.

“At one point we believed that 40-percent of incoming referrals were going nowhere. Forty- percent of people diagnosed with something like Crohn’s disease were not making it into the infusion chair. We‘re trying to figure out why someone would go through the process of getting diagnosed with a complex disease state and then never come in for their infusion,” Schadewald said. “Everyone wants to know it, we do, the doctors, the manufacturer [of the drug], the payers want to know it, we are trying to figure it out and LeadingReach is a tool that can help us figure it out.”