Top Scheduling Resources for Hospitals, Clinics, and Healthcare Organizations

21 Oct, 2016 | Tags: , ,

Top Scheduling Resources for Hospitals, Clinics, and Healthcare Organizations

Every month, thousands of hospital administrators and staff personnel use a wide variety of software resources to deal with the challenges of scheduling people. These software comes with an easy to use interface that automatically generate hospital schedules using user-definable schedule plans. So if you are looking for the best resource to help you schedule people, look no further. In this post, we have provided a comprehensive list of resources for hospital administrators. Read on to find out more about these resources.   If you are looking to schedule employees then we have you covered.

Reservio

Reservio is one of the best online booking and scheduling software. One thing about this software is that it has been optimized for a wide range of business categories. It helps hospital administrators accept booking 24 days seven days a week, organize scheduling and share useful information about the hospital and its clients. It is a free to try software not only for healthcare facilities but also education, sport or personal care entities.

Veribook

Veribook is a great tool used for the purpose of online appointment and scheduling. It displays the real time that a hospital is available to accept and manage appointments. The software comes with simple to use interface and a wide selection of features to help an organization save administrative time and money. The software is the face of future customer service as far as appointment and scheduling is concerned.

A.I.med

AImed is a robust, well built and easy to use scheduling system. It has the ability to schedule and manage both single and multiple appointments simultaneously. Users can use it to balance alerts, collect payment at check-in/out, to send messages and to put some people on the waitlist. It comes with multiple office support and an optional patient reminder system.

Voicent’s AutoReminder

Voicent’s AutoReminder is one of the best appointment reminder software available. This tool features an automated appointment scheduling and client reminder system. Users can use this feature to send personalized messages to any mobile phone device. When a reminder call is made, the software allows the recipient to reschedule the appointment, confirm it or leave a personal message by simply pressing a number on their mobile devices.

TimeTrade

TimeTrade is a web-based appointment scheduling software. This tool is designed in that it can be deployed for customer self-service scheduling through voice or internet response systems, central scheduling through agents of call center agents or simply for internal use. This web-based tool is ideal for both large and small organizations in a wide range of fields from healthcare to financial services.

Yocale

Yocale is an excellent software that provides hospital administrators with convenient and reliable scheduling, marketing, patient management and reporting. The software also comes with full-service tools that can fit into any business and help it grow. Yocale is ideal for any Individual or service providing business that accepts appointments.

Ultra Charts

Ultra Charts was designed over 30 years ago to improve organization’s efficiency and revenue stream. This software is a fully integrated, easier to use and a completely certified system that that comes with built-in customization options. The software’s system includes can be used for appointment scheduling, billing, as a Patient Portal and to display electronic medical records.

Eclipse

Eclipse is one of the Practice Management Software that has been in use across the word for over 20 years. The software can be used for scheduling, billing, an extensive alerts system, EHR (electronic health record), certified HIPAA compliant electronic claims, daily notes, and remittance. Some of its unique features include a patient data access tracking system to help hospital administrators run myriad reports.

ScheduleHopper

ScheduleHopper can be used to manage client information and scheduling all in one place. This tool safes time organizing client information and scheduling meeting. If you are a hospital administrator or staff personnel who regularly schedule appointment with your patients and want something clean, convenient and reliable, then ScheduleHopper is a good software for you.

Appointment Scheduler

Just like ScheduleHopper, Appointment Scheduler is another excellent scheduling software available in the market. This tool features a very easy to use, fully customizable and extremely fast appointment scheduling system. Users who use this software get access to an outstanding level of support. It has the ability to schedule and manage both single and multiple appointments simultaneously

How Hotel Managers Can Save Time with Online Scheduling Software

11 Apr, 2016 | Tags: , , , ,

As a hotel manager, one of the challenging aspects of your job description is ensuring that all employees work when they’re supposed to. Given the many employees and departments hotel managers have to deal with, there’s no guarantee that every day will run smoothly. In fact, you can probably assume that it won’t!

Employees might not report to work for a variety of reasons and finding someone to cover their shifts can be tough work. Some workers might work overtime and want compensation for the extra hours. Keeping track of the daily employee schedules usually means working long hours, constantly updating records and keeping in contact with departmental supervisors.

But why not automate the processes? Online scheduling software makes it easy to handle employee schedules without going through the daily strains mentioned above. Most hotel managers are adopting this software as a way of managing and saving their time. Some of the ways scheduling software will help you save time include the following.

Accessible anywhere with an internet connection

It’s not uncommon to hear a hotel manager having to abruptly report to work in order to sort out some scheduling issue. Maybe an employee didn’t report to work and the manager is expected to find someone to cover the shift. In such instances, the scheduling system is only available within the hotel offices. Time is wasted traveling to work, sorting through the schedule and contacting possible replacements. With an online based scheduling software, all the hotel manager needs to do is log into their account, filter out employees who are free and contact them. This can be done from anywhere with an internet connection.

Employee input

One of the challenging aspects of creating a daily, weekly or even monthly employee work schedule is determining which hours to assign a particular employee. The process involves a lot of consultations with individual employees. It can also lead to bad relations when some employees are assigned work shifts during hours they don’t like. At the end of the day, employee productivity suffers and this reflects on the hotel’s performance. Hotel staff usually feel comfortable when they have a say about the work and leave hours assigned to them. They will also be more willing to cover for a colleague if they find that the time allocation favors their schedule. Working this out manually can be a headache on the managers part.

However, by using online scheduling software, employees are able to select the work hours they find most suitable for their daily routine. In addition, the software handles issues such as duplicate entries ensuring that each employee works the desired amount of hours every month to get paid. Since the system is web based, each employee can select his or her work and rest hours remotely without having to present themselves at the hotel. For the manager, this means less time spent contacting, consulting and updating the hotel employee work schedule.

Wage calculations

This is another challenging aspect of hotel management. As a manager, you might be handling tens or even hundreds of employees at once. The work schedule is such that you have to account for regular work hours, overtime and even paid leave during each payment cycle. This might require keeping track of every individual employee on a daily basis. That’s a lot of extra hours spent on sorting out the daily wages due to tens of hundreds of employees. Such time can be spent working on other things that relate to the hotel managers job description. An online based scheduling system makes it easy to calculate wages due to each employee. It allows you to easily view the number of hours each employee as worked throughout the month and calculate his or her salary.

Easy to contact employees

Trying to find every employee’s contact information and calling them individually can take up a lot of time. An online based scheduling system makes the process easier and time efficient. Since each employee can insert his or her contact information within the assigned section within the software, this makes it easy for the manager to find such information with a few clicks. In addition, the software allows hotel managers to send a single message to multiple employees at once saving time.

Working as a hotel manager means that most of your time is spent keeping track of employee work schedules and ensuring that each day progresses just fine. You can easily cut down of this time by adopting online scheduling software. The software does most of the heavy lifting allowing you to get more time to attend to other activities that come with the hotel manager’s job description.

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5 Tips to Convert a First Time Customer into a Lifetime Customer

17 Nov, 2015 | Tags: , , , , ,

Congratulations!  You have sold your product (or service) to a new customer.  It’s a great feeling!  Then you say something like “Thank you, let me know if there is anything else I can help you with in the future.”  Basically, right there, without realizing it, you killed it, and not in a good way.  You see, the translation to what you just said is really, “I got my sale, I’m done at my end, and if you want anything else then you’ll have to contact me.  I’m not going to put any additional effort into you because I came for the sale and I already got it.”  That may not be your intention, but that’s how it may have come across. 

In reality, it doesn’t even matter if you got the sale just now.  You might be scratching your head over this statement, but it’s true.  If you are sincere in wanting a forever customer then you need to build a relationship.  That’s the key.  Most times they can get the product or service from someone else so why should they do business with you?

Build a Relationship.

  A potential customer wants to see that you are interested in them, not as a paycheck, but as someone who wishes to serve them, to help, direct, educate, to build a customer for life.  They want to know that you’re in their corner.  If you are sincere is wanting to be in their corner than that brings us to the next step, listening.

Ask Open-Ended Questions and Listen to the Answers.

Find out about them.  The more information they share, the more you can see how your product or service can help them now or in the future.  Note:  Keep a journal and jot down info on them so you can bring it up in the future.  And remember, you might be doing something totally different in the future, and they may too.  So, I hope you see that a relationship is more important than one sale.  If it is, then that brings us to the next step, finding out how they want you to connect.

Communication.

How does your potential customer like to be addressed?  How do they like to share communication?  By phone? Email? Text?  There’s nothing more irritating to a potential customer than communicating to someone that you don’t want to communicate via phone and would prefer email and they keep calling you, over and over again.  Is this person really connected to their potential customer’s needs?  Absolutely not.

Your New Product or Service to Their Needs

. Always inform your customer if there is something new or something on sale that you feel would be of interest to them.  Let them hear your enthusiasm, and explain to her/him that you wanted to share this new product/service because “you remembered how fill in the blank was so important to them.  Take the time to explain how it may meet their needs.  As you grow this relationship, remember to note how their needs have changed; don’t be afraid to ask them why they’ve changed.  Did they get married?  Start a new business venture?  Downsize or have kids?

New Life Event?  Special Occasion?

Remember special occasions and send a card, call or in some cases, send a little gift.  Maybe they just had a child, or it’s their company’s anniversary or they just returned from a fabulous vacation.  Reaching out to them reminds them of your sincerity to be there for them when needed.  My husband and I have a realtor friend and he sends a calendar with his name and phone number on it to us at the end of each year.  He calls us twice a year just to check in, remind us that he’s there for us and asks if we have any questions about the market.  I say realtor “friend” even though he’s not a social friend.  We view him as such though because he builds relationships and we know whether we buy or sell a house soon, he is there to help us with any questions.  He’s a great example of creating a customer for life.  Without a doubt, we will be calling him if and when we decide to sell and would feel very comfortable recommending him to our friends and associates.

Where ever you or your customer may go in life, there’s always an opportunity to take them with you. 

  By Karen Orem

Why Every Restaurant Needs to Use Scheduling Software

06 Aug, 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

It’s pretty easy to see that communication is a necessity to any thriving business.  In today’s economy, it’s paramount to have a step-up in your communication whenever possible. The restaurant business can be brutal at times, with small margins and long hours, not to mention all the variables that can quickly turn a successful start to a day into an understaffed nightmare!  Keeping a large crowd waiting too long at the hostess station and you may have just lost potential customers forever.  Between understaffed waiters/waitresses, tables that need to be cleared, food orders getting cold, and special customer requests, many times managers and their employees alike can quickly feel the stress of the situation, and that’s not good for anyone!  That’s where innovative technology comes into play.

Share the Load

Using staff scheduling software can lighten a manager’s load considerably by

  • allowing managers to have the ability to create their schedules from home, if they choose, instead of in the midst of all the commotion in their backroom
  • managers no longer need to cater to all those interruptions from employees asking when they are scheduled to work next
  • they won’t be inundated with scraps of paper with handwritten notes trying to decipher when their employee is requesting some time off
  • since now the employee is responsible for adding their own requests directly into the system, if you try to schedule this employee during an unavailable time, a pop-up will remind you about their request
  • when it’s time to schedule that team meeting, it takes the guesswork and out of wondering if you’ve contacted everyone because now, it’s only a button click away

Think of all the time you’ll save by not having to rewrite a schedule over and over again! 

Employee Approved

Your employees will love using the online employee schedule system too!  They’ll be able to

  • access their schedule via smartphone, or simply check online; no more time wondering when the schedule is completed, or having to run back up to the restaurant to check the board
  • input their own requests for time off, eliminating potential disagreements or friction; no more keeping your fingers crossed in hopes that your manager remembers your request
  • receive reminders for when you’re scheduled to work; no more awkward feelings, wondering if you should call work to find out, or just show up and hope you were scheduled   

The Bar

Another important area of a restaurant that cannot be overemphasized is the bar. If a bartender doesn’t show up due to a lack of communication this can cause a potential great loss in revenue to everyone involved. Using a streamlined bar scheduling software can open up lines of communication and increase a restaurants profits substantially by

  • having each bartender’s hours specifically laid out in such a way that meets everyone’s needs; bars typically open during later hours, and bartenders are typically balancing many schedules throughout their day
  • bartender’s having the ability to put in requests from their smartphone or computer saving them time, and better organizing their daily schedule which expands communication
  • increasing profit margins by keeping the bar open on time and keeping those drinks filled; generating greater profits for everyone
  • keeping the highest profit margin available means that employee hours don’t get cut; everyone in the restaurant can be affected by this    

Now, everything goes directly into the system, all in one, easy to use place!

The folks at WhatTimeDoIWork.com have made a huge impact to help you save time, improve even the best communication, all while saving you money.  This new innovative scheduling software didn’t happen overnight.  It was developed by experts with over thirty years of scheduling experience who took the time to sit down and listen to what managers and their employees both needed and wanted to become more successful.  Taking all their data into consideration, this team has developed a polished system where everything transpires in one place and can be accessed any time, day or night, from any place in the world.  They have produced the gift of giving you less stress and making life easier, while at the same time allowing you more time to work on those other important tasks for your business, you know, the ones listed under all those other papers that you can now throw away!

3 Ways to Promote Restaurant Staff Communication

06 Jul, 2015 | Tags: , , , , ,

Restaurant staff members are like family, and as such, they act like family. That means they love each other, but they can also have moments of serious conflict. Any restaurant owner or manager knows how easy it is to succumb to the “family life” in the restaurant business. But no owner wants to play the parent when things go sour. Here are some ways you can start promoting a professional atmosphere without losing the family feel that makes working in the restaurant business so much fun. One of the most important things you can always work on in the restaurant world is promoting lines of communication between staff, BOH and FOH, and managers.

1. Pre-Pop Meet-Up

You know the busiest times for you restaurant. Sometimes the most helpful way to promote healthy staff chemistry is by looking ahead for trouble. When servers and cooks are the busiest, that’s when they are most likely to make mistakes. By gathering the back of house and front of house for pre-pop meet-ups, you’re acknowledging as a manager that things are about to get busy, but you should take the time to ask your staff, “what do we need to get through this busy shift as a strong and capable team?” By doing this you’re making everyone feel involved and ready to take on the busiest points of their shift. Also by coordinating these pre-shift meets, you’re creating an atmosphere of professionalism in the workplace.

2. Open Door Policy

One of the reasons the restaurant business can feel so much like family is because more often than not staff, managers, and owners all work in the same space. The “open door policy” that most corporate offices have, doesn’t really work the same way if you’re manager doesn’t have a “door”. Even if you do not have a private office for staff members to come and speak with you at any time of any given work day, you can help by setting aside a set time each week for staff members to feel invited to come and speak with you about any issues. It’s also helpful to give your staff members a more private way to request a meeting with you. Consider posting a phone number, email address, or even anonymous text information poster in the staff room, anything that will help a staff member talk about issues, before acting out on them while on your floor.

3. Strategic Scheduling

You know your restaurant employees. You know who works best with whom, and that means from the kitchen to the front of house staff to the managers. Consider carefully when you put together the work schedules for the week. How can you make the most of the staff you have? Consider if there are some people who enjoy each others time more and work well together. Consider if there are some employees who could use more help during peak rush hours and perhaps that individual should be scheduled with someone who can help that employee during the shift. There is much to consider when scheduling for your restaurant, but by choosing whom you schedule and when carefully, you will make a more productive and enjoyable shift every time. Use What Time Do I Work for your scheduling needs to help you clear your lines of communication!