Introduction

IntelliPract® / InSched is designed to simplify patient and customer management. It can be used in many types of practice and many customer-facing businesses, but it is especially focused on Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery practices.

History of InSched

InSched was initially built by James Nachbar, MD, to manage scheduling at his new private plastic and cosmetic surgery practice. He looked at the available options, but none of them provided the ease of use and automatic configuration that he wanted. Also, he had staff who were used to their paper scheduling books, and were not in favor of converting to an electronic schedule. He knew it would be essential to have an Audit Track, so that when the inevitable mistakes were made, there would be a clear record of what had happened. Unfortunately, at the time, none of the scheduling systems availabe did audit tracking.

After Dr. Nachbar was using the scheduler he wrote to manage his own practice, along with the Inform & Enhance (I & E) Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) system, he was speaking with the developer of I & E, who mentioned that they needed a scheduler.

Therefore, the scheduler was modified to complement and integrate with the Inform & Enhance CRM and renamed InSched. The I & E system tracks contacts with patients and customers, including facilitating follow up and communication with patients as they progress through the sequence of Inquiry, Appointment, Consultation, Scheduling Surgery, and Completing Surgery, as well as managing deviations from that path.

Before InSched, staff would often not remember to create the patient's record in the CRM when an appointment was made, but rather would wait to create the record until the CRM was needed to provide a procedure quotation.

Then, they would often not remember to update the stage when the patient scheduled surgery until the pre-operative visit, when the CRM was again needed to create the pre-operative packet.

Since there was nothing else necessary from the CRM when the surgery was performed (or perhaps canceled), those stage updates were often missed.

And if the appointment was missed, or the surgery canceled, that information was never provided to the CRM, so there was no trigger to perform the necessary follow up.

InSched changed all that. By integrating the electronic schedule with the CRM, InSched prompts the creation of a patient record in the CRM as soon as the appointment was made. When the patient checked in for the consultation, InSched prompts to advance the stage to Consultation, even if a quote is never produced. Similarly, when surgery is scheduled, completed, or canceled, InSched prompts for the appropriate stage updates.

By ensuring that the stage updates are entered as needed, InSched dramatically improves the Customer Relationship Management at the practice, ensuring that appropriate followup communications are undertaken.

As InSched matured, it was enhanced to include all the essential features needed for Dr. Nachbar's plastic surgery practice. In addition to scheduling and CRM functions, that included billing and transaction tracking, paperless charting (actually faster and easier than a paper chart), text message appointment reminders and text message communication with patients using the practice's main phone number, a patient portal, integrated credit card processing, and integration with the Canfield imaging suite.

Throughout its development, the focus was on simplifying all practice operations, automating as much as possible. Gently guiding the user to do the right thing, but never getting in the way when the user wants to do something different. And always audit-tracking what was done.