Client story

How Lake Medical Imaging cleared a 16,000-patient backlog

An independent radiology practice in central Florida came off an RIS that could no longer keep up, and cleared a scheduling queue of sixteen thousand patients.

IndependentOutpatient, multi-siteLive since 2023
Troy Purcell
Practice Administrator,
Lake Medical Imaging
+6 more on the record ↓
Practice profileIndependent, outpatient
6
locations across The Villages and Leesburg, Florida
$400K
saved in the first year on intake and scheduling
1,000+
inbound documents a day
20+
radiologists on staff
On the record

Six people from one practice, from the front desk to the boardroom.

The two schedulers who work the queue first, then the director who had to make the change stick, the IT lead who ran the migration, and the two people who signed for it.

The desk

the two people who work the queue, one call at a time
2 interviews
Two months in1:02
Anne Murphy
Scheduler
“The patients I think appreciate the fact you’re not hemming and hawing. You’re able to give them the information.”
In the interview: what the system is like for someone new to it
Works the phones3:51
Jewell Frost
Scheduler
“I can remember at times when it was eight to 10 minutes, and the majority of that was just watching something spin.”
In the interview: what the phones are like now
Jump to a chapter7 chapters

The department

the person who has to make the change stick
1 interview
Patti Gates
Director of Operations
38 years at the practice
“They actually helped us to build what we needed, not what they wanted us to have.”
5,000orders backed up before the change
300–500left in the queue on a normal morning
1,000+inbound documents arriving every day
In the interview: what changed for the people running the department
Jump to a chapter7 chapters

The migration

the person who had to not break anything
1 interview
What the migration came down to
The constraintDated PACSwith a lot of limitations for interfacing
The differentiatorNo other vendorcould move the data out of the existing PACS database
Since go-liveHours, not daystypical time from raising an issue to a fix
“The data migration was the most impressive I’ve seen.”
Ran the migration
Michael Rosa
Director of IT

He goes through the whole migration in the interview, including what worried him going in.

In the interview: what it took technically, and where the risk was
Jump to a chapter8 chapters

The decision

the two people who signed for it

The verdict, not the pitch.

2 interviews
President, 2005 to 2023
“I’m very pleased with the decision we made even though I was really anxious about the big change. It was difficult to do, but it has really turned out quite well.”
In the interview: was it worth it, from the chair that signed for it
Dr. Cathrine E. Keller
President Emeritus
Jump to a chapter6 chapters
Built the case
“You’re really the first system that we’ve had that has performed well on both of those fronts.”
In the interview: why the practice moved, and what it was costing to stand still
Troy Purcell
Practice Administrator
Jump to a chapter9 chapters
The facility

Walk the building the way the work moves through it.

Rafael De Leon walks the departments that handle an order before the patient ever arrives: fax management and insurance verification, medical records, scheduling, then the front desk.

Fax management1,200 to 1,500 faxes a day
Insurance verificationestimation, verification, authorization
Medical recordsrequests, merges, report corrections
Schedulingon site and from home
Check-informs, balances, payments
Jump to a chapter5 chapters
“They’re sorting north of a thousand faxes, 1,200 to 1,500 faxes a day.”Rafael De Leon, on the fax management desk
16,000
patients waiting to be
scheduled before AbbaDox
1,000+
inbound documents
arriving every day
300–500
orders left in the queue
on a normal morning
01 · The backlog

A waiting list nobody had time to work

Lake Medical Imaging serves a retirement community where demand does not soften in the off season, and it takes in more than a thousand new orders a day. Those orders arrived by fax and were handled by hand: found, identified, labeled with the patient and the study, then put in a queue to be scheduled. By 2023 the practice was, in its director of operations’ count, sixteen thousand patients behind.

  • Faxed orders identified, labeled and queued manually
  • Orders not attached to the patient account, so schedulers looked in two places
  • Reminder calls made one at a time, every day, by hand
  • No self-scheduling and no patient portal of their own
02 · The migration

Off an aging RIS, without touching the PACS

The practice had already tried one replacement that failed and had to go back to the incumbent, so the second attempt was made carefully. IT set the hard constraint: the existing PACS stayed, and the new platform had to interface with it. That turned out to be what separated the vendors, because the data in the old PACS database had to come across and only one vendor could do it. Go-live was deliberately delayed when end-to-end testing found problems.

  • Existing PACS kept in place and interfaced, not replaced
  • Historic data migrated out of the PACS database into the new scheduling system
  • End-to-end testing before go-live, with the date pushed back when it found problems
Why they moved
“We really knew that our RIS system was never going to get any better. It was hurting our ability to function, causing a lot of patient complaints and referring doctor complaints.”
Dr. Cathrine E. Keller, President Emeritus
Lake Medical Imaging
03 · The front desk

Reminders that send themselves

Inbound orders are now sorted in CareFlow and attached to the patient account, so the scheduler has the order and the history on one screen while the patient is still on the phone. Reminders and appointment notifications go out automatically instead of being called by staff, patients have a portal of their own for reports, images and upcoming appointments, and schedulers can invite them to it without routing the call to IT.

  • Orders sorted and attached to the account, no second system to search
  • Automated appointment reminders and notifications in place of daily call-outs
  • Patient portal for images, reports and appointments, with self-service invites
  • Remote scheduling staff, which the old system could not support

The results Lake Medical sees

$400K
Saved in the first year
16,000→900–1,200
Patients waiting to be scheduled, right before AbbaDox and in November 2023 (Patti Gates, TechTalks Ep. 3)
2.1 → 4.8
Google patient rating,
within six months
24-hour turnaround for new appointments, down from weeks.
RBMA PaRADigm 2024 citation →
60%
faster patient registration
65%
less manual call time for the scheduling team
RBMA2024PaRADigm
Recognition

RBMA PaRADigm Award 2024, Practice Innovation

Awarded jointly to Lake Medical Imaging and AbbaDox by the Radiology Business Management Association, for the intake and scheduling program that cleared the backlog.

Read the citation →
More from this team

Two of them went on the record again.

Patty Gates and Dr. Cathrine Keller each took a TechTalks panel through a piece of this in more detail than a customer film has room for. Separate series, registration required.

TechTalks Ep. 3Advanced Workflow AutomationPatty Gates on the scheduling queue, before and after, in her own wordsRegister for the full episode →
TechTalks Ep. 4Optimizing Breast Health WorkflowsDr. Cathrine Keller on the first breast imaging Center of Excellence in FloridaRegister to watch →

Ready to grow
with AbbaDox?

Join Lake Medical Imaging and hundreds of other imaging practices running intake, scheduling and billing on one platform.

Customers compare notes in person too. The CareFlow Club seats ten to fifteen imaging leaders at one long table, one city at a time. See the CareFlow Club →

Book a demo

Practices like this one

All client stories →

Other independent, outpatient, multi-site practices with the same intake problem.

Regional Medical ImagingMichigan
95% less staff time on confirmation calls

40 hours a week down to 2, with 7.9% fewer same-day cancellations.

IndependentMulti-site
One Step DiagnosticHouston, Texas
From check-in to results, paperless

Real-time texting and paperless registration, walked through on a facility tour.

OutpatientFacility tour
Desert ImagingEl Paso, Texas
$63,438 booked from one follow-up campaign

Ten years on the platform, and a follow-up list that now works itself.

5 centersIndependent