Private & confidential
Where your team's time really goes — and the easiest ways to get it back.
We measured 10 business days across 22 computers — Front Desk (8) · Clinical coordinators (5) · Billing (5) · Office managers (4). Not a survey, not interviews: how the work actually happened.
Things worth knowing
Nothing here is anyone doing a bad job. It's work that repeats, or happens in two places at once — exactly the kind that's easiest to hand off.
A third of front-desk time goes to phones and voicemail. Meanwhile recall texts, confirmations, and intake typing wait — the exact work an assistant can draft or do outright.
Eligibility checks, claims-status lookups, and EOB posting consume most of Billing’s day — nearly all of it portal-hopping and re-typing into the PMS.
The recall list gets exported from the PMS weekly, worked by hand, and annotated in Excel. Patients fall through exactly where the copies diverge.
Patients fill forms; front desk re-types them into the PMS — about 180 forms a week across the three offices.
Your PMS exposes an API; the big payers have portal or clearinghouse connections. This is setup, not new software.
Where the day goes
Share of active time by kind of tool, across all 22 measured machines — and where information gets carried by hand between programs.
| Information moves by hand | Into | Times / week |
|---|---|---|
| Phone / voicemail | PMS notes & schedule | 240 |
| Payer portals | PMS ledger | 220 |
| Paper / PDF intake forms | PMS | 180 |
| PMS | Excel recall list | 120 |
| PMS | 100 |
Every row is a person being the integration between two programs. Connect the programs and the row disappears.
The opportunities, ranked
Ordered by where we'd start — payoff weighed against effort. The list adds up to the headline; where two touch the same hours, we sequence them rather than count twice.
| # | Opportunity | Team | Hours/yr | Value/yr | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | An assistant for patient messages, recall drafts, and confirmations | Front Desk | 720 | $32,400 | quick win |
| 2 | Insurance eligibility checked automatically before every visit | Billing | 540 | $24,300 | quick win |
| 3 | Unconfirmed-patient chasing that runs itself | Front Desk | 380 | $17,100 | quick win |
| 4 | Claims-status checking: portals → PMS, no hopping | Billing | 460 | $20,700 | medium |
| 5 | EOB posting into the PMS | Billing | 410 | $18,450 | medium |
| 6 | Intake forms flow into the PMS — typed once, by the patient | Front Desk | 350 | $15,750 | medium |
| 7 | Referral and treatment letters drafted from the chart | Clinical | 290 | $13,050 | medium |
| 8 | Protecting front-desk focus (phone triage + quiet blocks) | Whole team | 980 | $44,100 | bigger project |
| 9 | Instant answers on patients, plans, and production | Whole team | 420 | $18,900 | bigger project |
A simple plan to get started
Start small; let the early wins pay for the bigger steps. The dollar figures are time you get back each year — not what setup costs.
- →An assistant for patient messages, recall drafts, and confirmations
- →Insurance eligibility checked automatically before every visit
- →Unconfirmed-patient chasing that runs itself
Recall, confirmations, and eligibility — the front desk feels this in week one.
- →Claims-status checking: portals → PMS, no hopping
- →EOB posting into the PMS
- →Intake forms flow into the PMS — typed once, by the patient
- →Referral and treatment letters drafted from the chart
PMS, payer portals, and intake talking to each other — the re-typing stops.
- →Protecting front-desk focus (phone triage + quiet blocks)
- →Instant answers on patients, plans, and production
Focus protection and practice-wide answers — the largest numbers, planned deliberately.
What year one looks like
Phases come online in months 2, 4, and 8. Monthly run-rate of time recovered, cumulative — conservative by design.
How you compare
Against the typical operation of your size and industry that we measure. Illustrative benchmarks — the point is where you sit, not decimal precision.
| Metric | You | Typical |
|---|---|---|
| Front-desk time on phones/voicemail | 31% | 20–25% |
| Recall contacts handled per week | ~140 | ~200 (automated practices) |
| Intake typed twice | Yes | No (digital intake) |
| PMS API-ready | Yes | Usually |
A day for Front desk 2 — before and after
Same person, same job, same morning. The difference is what the systems do on their own.
- ·7:40am — voicemail backlog: 11 messages transcribed into PMS notes by hand
- ·Between patients — yesterday’s intake forms re-typed into the PMS
- ·11am — recall list exported to Excel, 40 minutes of calls and texts, results typed back
- ·3pm — eligibility checked payer-by-payer for tomorrow’s schedule
- ·Interrupted every ~6 minutes, all day
- ✓7:40am — overnight messages already transcribed, sorted, and drafted for reply
- ✓Intake arrives structured in the PMS — the patient typed it once
- ✓Recall runs continuously; the desk reviews a short exception list
- ✓Tomorrow’s eligibility verified overnight; only the 3 flags need a human
- ✓The desk answers the phone like a practice, not a call center
Your systems can already do this
Most of what we found needs connection, not new software. Automated Edge sets these up and runs them for you.
API-ready. Four of the five busiest hand-offs point into it.
Scheduled checks replace the portal-hopping that eats Billing’s morning.
The assistant drafts recalls, confirmations, and referral letters from here.
Patients type it once; the PMS receives it structured. 180 forms a week stop being re-typed.
What we measured, computer by computer
Six of the 22 machines shown. Roles, never names — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people. Click any card for that machine's detail.
How this rolls out without breaking your week
The change-management is the product. Four rules we run every engagement by.
One person per team helps tune their own workflow first and shows the rest. Adoption follows proof, not announcements.
Every automation runs in draft-first mode before it acts — you see what it would have done for a week, then turn it loose.
Each change can be switched off in one step, independently. The old way keeps working until the new way has earned trust.
A standing monthly review: what saved time, what needs tuning, what to add next. The plan updates with the evidence.
| Wk 1–2 | Systems connected read-only; draft-mode assistants watching, not acting |
| Wk 3–4 | Quick wins go live team by team, champions first |
| Wk 5–8 | The system connections: the copying between programs stops |
| Wk 9–12 | First monthly review with measured savings; bigger bets scoped with real usage data |
How this was measured — openly
- ✓Every person was informed in writing before measurement began; signed acknowledgments on file.
- ✓Never captured, at any tier: keystrokes, clipboard contents, email bodies.
- ✓Roles are shown instead of names throughout this report — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people.
- ✓All captured data is encrypted, scoped to this company alone, and hard-deleted five business days after this report is delivered.
What happens next
Recall, confirmations, eligibility — a few weeks in, and the Assessment fee credits against it.
PMS, payer portals, and digital intake joined — the re-typing stops, and the numbers stay measured.
A living view of the practice — hours saved, recall conversion, what to do next — reviewed with you monthly.
This is the deliverable the Assessment produces for a business like yours — measured on your machines, tied to ROI, with the consent architecture on every page. The real one is built from your 10 business days.