Customer Spotlight: Center Of Excellence in Diabetes and Endocrinology (CEDE)

Meet Mila Melnik, the Administrator and Clinical Lead at CEDE – the largest children’s endocrinologist center in northern California. It’s no surprise that after 12 years at CEDE, Mila manages the practice effortlessly. But with 1,500 patients every month, Mila and her staff were overwhelmed by phone calls. And there wasn’t enough time in a day to get back to every patient.

That’s when we entered the picture. 

Busy. If we weren’t answering a call from a patient, we were on the phone trying to reach another one. It felt like we were on the phone non-stop. One patient would call in to cancel their appointment. Another would call in to reschedule. And meanwhile, in between answering all of those calls, we were trying to return voicemails and get in touch with patients on our waitlist.

When we would have a patient cancel, we would manually go into our schedule and scroll through each available appointment to find one that (hopefully) worked for the patient. Meanwhile, we have the patient on the phone waiting. That was if, and when, we could get the patient on the phone.

A lot of the time, we were returning voicemails. And when our front staff did have extra time to return those calls, it was impossible to reach patients. We were calling during our business hours, which is typically during work and school hours. So, it was an endless game of phone call tag with patients.

For starters, we’re not on the phone all day anymore (and neither are our patients). Everything is just so much easier.

Our patients can schedule appointments via text message, which they love. And since you auto-create appointments for patients on our waitlist, they receive options sent via text and can choose to accept or decline them with a simple reply. Then, the new appointment is automatically added to Practice Fusion.

Did we mention how much we love the waitlist?!

No-shows aren’t such a headache anymore, either. We don’t even have to call the patient. We just add them to the waitlist and you do the rest.

We don’t have to pick up the phones anymore for those, either! Your auto texts really have changed the way we do everything at our practice. Our front office staff is huge Luma fans!

We send reminders via text now, too. One of the best parts that we didn’t expect was that our patients are far more likely to respond to text messages rather than returning our phone calls.

Luma has given us the ability to reach far more patients than we could before. We can also now see more patients sooner, and our schedule stays full. Our entire team at CEDE loves it and so do our patients. Here’s what they had to say…

Patient: “We love the reminders!”

Doctor: “Our schedule stays as full as possible now. And we’re able to see our patients sooner. Our patients are much happier.”

Front Desk Staff: “We’re now so much more aware of all that goes on in the schedule during the day. We know when a patient confirms or cancels an appointment, which allows us to better plan.”

All in all, Luma makes our jobs and our lives so much easier! It allows us to really provide the absolute best service to our patients. So, thank you!

If your waitlist is out of hand and you haven’t put down the phone, let us help. Reach out to schedule a free demo and learn more!

Angie Shin leads customer success at Luma Health. When she’s not giving customers love, you can find her climbing rocks or sipping tea at the local cat cafe.