How Optimized Provider Scheduling Improves Patient and Room Scheduling

Background

Michigan-based Lansing Pediatric Associates has provided pediatric care to the Lansing community for over 50 years. The practice provides in-person and virtual well-child care and sports medicine for children of all ages.

Challenge

For many years, one of Lansing Pediatric’s physicians manually scheduled the practice’s nine physicians and three nurse practitioners using Excel. In addition to the frustration caused by manual schedule builds, the practice frequently faced missed or last-minute changes that weren’t properly reflected on distributed versions of the schedule. The schedule was made four to six months in advance and texted out to providers, meaning there was no central access point to see the correct, most up-to-date version. 

While administrators gathered vacation requests in advance of manually creating the schedule, ensuring equitable shift allocation was a challenge. Furthermore, if providers needed to take personal time or swap shifts outside of the initial schedule creation process, this required admins to rework the schedule and resend a static copy. It was time to drop the manual process and implement a tech-enabled solution that would optimize the schedule from start to finish.

Choosing the Right Scheduling Solution

Implementation

To get the scheduling system up and running at Lansing Pediatric, a dedicated technical consultant employed Lightning Bolt’s white-glove customer service model to train Cory and others on how to use all of the platform’s features. The consultant also helped set up the initial rules that Lightning Bolt would use to begin building schedules. “He took the time to understand what we were trying to do and was able to put the schedule together,” Cory said.

Results

Auto-Generation and Optimization

With Lightning Bolt implemented, the previously manual process of building and managing the schedule has been completely replaced. With the simple click of a button, Lightning Bolt now assembles the best possible schedule in a matter of minutes. Cory can make edits by hand if needed, but because the optimized solution manages time-off requests, swaps, and other unique rules—such as each provider having one work day off per week—with ease, it’s frequently not necessary.

Optimizing Provider Utilization

Lightning Bolt is a tool that builds provider schedules, but for many practices, it’s not just about having a complete schedule—it’s about having the best schedule. For Lansing Pediatrics, that meant maximizing the number of providers in the building based on the quantity of available rooms. It sounds like a fairly straightforward task, but when you can use technology to optimize workforce utilization, everybody benefits. Lightning Bolt allows Lansing Pediatric to find the sweet spot between having too many providers and not enough providers on any given day.

Improved Patient Scheduling

Lightning Bolt was implemented to streamline the provider scheduling side of the house, but patient scheduling has been positively impacted, too. Thanks to more accurate provider schedules that are built further in advance, Lansing Pediatric can now schedule patients more proactively as well. This is a boon for patient satisfaction and greatly increases access to care appointments, sometimes allowing patients to schedule visits a year ahead of time.

Time Savings and Efficiency

The previous scheduler used to spend many hours building the schedules in Excel. With Lightning Bolt, that time has dropped dramatically. The schedule requirements unique to Lansing Pediatric were entered during implementation, and rules were created inside of Lightning Bolt to ensure those needs are always met with each schedule build. That means Cory simply hits the “auto-generate” button today, and an optimized, gapless schedule is created in minutes. Cory expressed deep satisfaction with the much-needed efficiency Lightning Bolt brings to the scheduling process, describing the time saved as immeasurable.

“Before Lightning Bolt, the scheduler would have to mentally prepare for and plan what day she would have to create the schedule to sit down and start working on it—trying to clear her schedule, clear her time with her family,” Cory said. “[This was] all to make sure she had dedicated focus time to create the schedule. The things that she was giving up because she needed to have that dedicated time to write the schedule—I don’t even think you could measure the savings.“

Lightning Bolt also boosted efficiency by enabling real-time schedule sharing. Providers no longer have to dig through old text messages to find the schedule, which was always a recipe for frustration. Today, providers have easy access to a schedule link that shows them who’s working each shift. The schedule is updated in real time based on swaps, time-off requests, and other inputs.

Provider Satisfaction

Offering providers greater schedule visibility allows them to plan ahead and exert more control over their lives outside of work. For example, providers at Lansing Pediatric work on a rounding schedule, meaning each provider rounds for a full week at a time. Because they know in advance when they’ll be rounding, they have more freedom to plan time off, family vacations, and days when it might be ideal to swap a shift with another provider. Before Lightning Bolt, they only had four to six months of schedule visibility, but today, they can see up to a year into the future.

Another convenient benefit is the ability for providers to submit shift-swap and time-off requests using the Lightning Bolt mobile app. In just a few taps, they can submit a request, and when accepted, the schedule is adjusted in real time. Some requests—such as weekend call swaps— are completely automated, which means a scheduler doesn’t have to approve them. This saves time on the scheduler’s side, eliminating the need to make schedule changes across the weekend, and gives providers yet another layer of control over their schedules.

Pre-Lightning Bolt, providers checked schedules through text messages. Today, 100% of providers are using the Lightning Bolt app, where they can access their schedules and send in shift change requests on the fly. Cory said app access has been a major source of satisfaction for all providers.

Today, the same technical consultant is still a dedicated support resource for the Lansing Pediatric team, and he works with them whenever they need assistance or have questions about their schedule. This level of service is the standard for all Lightning Bolt customers.

Conclusion

For Lansing Pediatrics Associates, Lightning Bolt was instrumental in allowing them to equitably schedule providers much further in advance than their previous manual workflow. The solution also improved capacity management for the practice by tying each room to a specific provider, and it brought greater flexibility and transparency to the patient scheduling process. Taken together, these benefits have made schedulers’ lives much less complicated while enhancing both patient satisfaction and work-life balance for providers.

From the simplest to the most complex shift requirements, switching to Lightning Bolt for schedule builds offers numerous—and sometimes unexpected—benefits. Other scheduling vendors offer automation, but Lightning Bolt’s unique scheduling algorithm, consistent and fair pricing, efficient implementation, user friendly desktop and mobile apps, and white-glove customer service stand out among the rest.