Oct 5, 2025
6
min read
Medically Reviewed
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Optimising the First Point of Contact: Intelligent Patient Intake
The patient journey, and its associated wait times, begins long before they walk through the clinic door. It starts with the first phone call. A busy reception desk managing a constant influx of calls is a common bottleneck, leading to long hold times, missed calls, and frustrated patients.[6] This initial inefficiency sets a precedent for delays throughout the rest of the visit. Automating and optimising this first step is crucial for managing patient flow effectively.
MediQo’s AI Telephony solution, CALLA, is designed specifically to solve this problem by providing unfailing 24/7 accessibility. It answers every single call, preventing the lost revenue and patient dissatisfaction that comes from an engaged tone or an after-hours answering machine. Unlike basic AI receptionists that offer limited functionality, CALLA engages patients in intelligent, lifelike conversations to understand their needs. It can book appointments directly into your clinic's PMS, such as Best Practice or Cliniko, and accurately allocates appropriate consultation durations based on the patient's stated needs. This prevents the common issue of a short appointment being booked for a complex issue, which invariably causes the schedule to run late.
Furthermore, CALLA streamlines the pre-visit process by capturing essential intake information as structured data during the call. This digital collection of pre-visit information significantly reduces administrative time at check-in.[7][8] This data flows directly into the PMS and is available to the clinician before the consult begins. This single, seamless flow of information from the first call into the clinical record is a core advantage of a unified platform, eliminating repetitive data entry and ensuring the entire team is prepared for the patient's arrival.
Accelerating the Consultation: The Power of Context and Automated Documentation
Once a patient is in the medical centre, a significant portion of their perceived wait time can occur within the consultation itself as clinicians navigate cumbersome electronic health records and complete extensive documentation. Studies have shown that primary care providers can spend a substantial part of their day on non-patient-facing administrative work, including managing records and paperwork.[3] This administrative burden not only slows down the current appointment but has a cumulative effect, pushing back subsequent appointment times throughout the day.
A unified platform like MediQo addresses this by providing immediate context and powerful documentation tools. The "History-at-a-Glance" feature presents a clear, role-aware timeline of the patient’s clinical story, pulling together past visits, diagnoses, and medications. This allows clinicians to start the consult fully informed, without wasting precious minutes digging through fragmented records. Contrast this with the inefficiency of navigating multiple, disconnected systems to piece together a patient's history.
During the consultation, MediQo's Clinical Assistant dramatically reduces documentation time. It moves far beyond the simple transcription offered by standalone AI scribe competitors. Through real-time ambient documentation and dictation, it captures structured, high-quality medical notes (e.g., SOAP-style) instantly. This structured data then powers further automation, such as generating personalised care plans, treatment plans, and smart referrals with complete clinical detail. This integrated approach, where documentation actively informs the next steps in the patient's care journey, means less time spent on paperwork and more time dedicated to the patient, leading to shorter, more effective consultations and a more efficient clinic overall.
Expert Tips
"Reducing patient wait times isn't just about better scheduling; it's about optimising the entire clinical workflow. When your intake, documentation, and billing systems are unified on one platform, you eliminate the dozens of small, repetitive delays that cascade into long waits." - Arash Zohuri, CEO, MediQo
Creating a Seamless Patient Flow: The Unified Platform Advantage
The key to minimising wait times is to create a smooth, uninterrupted flow for the patient from beginning to end. This is where the strategic weakness of using multiple, disconnected "point solutions" becomes most apparent. When a clinic uses separate software for bookings, telehealth, clinical notes, and billing, it creates friction at every handover point. Staff must switch between systems, data must be manually re-entered, and the risk of error increases, all of which contribute to delays.
A unified platform like MediQo eliminates these points of friction. The journey is seamless:
From Call to Booking: CALLA handles the initial patient contact and books them directly into the PMS, capturing intake data along the way.
From Booking to Consult: A single click can launch a secure Smart Telehealth visit directly from the booking, sending an automatic link to the patient and offering a convenient alternative to an in-person wait.[8][9]
During the Consult: The clinician has the patient's full history at their fingertips and can use the Clinical Assistant to generate notes, referrals, and care plans on the same screen.
Post-Consult Sync: A structured summary of the visit, along with compliant MBS item number suggestions from the Smart MBS Billing Assistant, is synced back to the PMS, closing the loop.
This entire process operates within one system, with one login and one consistent data model. The benefits are clear: faster onboarding for staff who only need to learn one interface, lower operational overhead from managing fewer vendors, and a robust, single security posture. This "under one roof" advantage is the most effective way to eliminate bottlenecks, reduce idle time, and create a truly efficient patient flow that respects both the patient's and the clinician's time.
Key Takeaways
Prioritizing Ethical AI Implementation
Optimizing Practice Efficiency and Revenue
The Power of Unified Platforms
Strategic Innovation for Sustainable Growth
Long wait times are a persistent source of frustration in Australian medical clinics, impacting patient satisfaction and contributing to a stressful work environment for staff.[1][2] The issue is multifaceted, stemming from pressures to see a high volume of patients, late arrivals, and the sheer weight of administrative tasks that pull clinicians away from direct patient care.[1][3] Research indicates that patients' primary concern has shifted from misdiagnosis to the difficulty in getting a timely appointment and the long waits upon arrival.[2] This challenge isn't just an inconvenience; it can lead to delayed care, increased frustration, and ultimately, a negative perception of the medical centre.[4][5] To tackle this systemic problem, clinics must look beyond simple scheduling adjustments and consider a more fundamental transformation of their operational workflow.
Many attempts to improve efficiency involve adopting new technologies. However, this often results in a fragmented ecosystem of "point solutions"—a separate booking app, a different tool for patient communication, another for clinical notes. This approach fails to address the root cause of inefficiency, which is the disjointed nature of the patient journey itself. A far more powerful strategy lies in adopting a single, unified clinical automation platform. By integrating every step of the patient interaction, from the initial phone call to the post-consultation follow-up, an all-in-one system can dramatically reduce wait times and enhance overall clinic efficiency by creating one seamless, intelligent workflow.
Optimising the First Point of Contact: Intelligent Patient Intake
The patient journey, and its associated wait times, begins long before they walk through the clinic door. It starts with the first phone call. A busy reception desk managing a constant influx of calls is a common bottleneck, leading to long hold times, missed calls, and frustrated patients.[6] This initial inefficiency sets a precedent for delays throughout the rest of the visit. Automating and optimising this first step is crucial for managing patient flow effectively.
MediQo’s AI Telephony solution, CALLA, is designed specifically to solve this problem by providing unfailing 24/7 accessibility. It answers every single call, preventing the lost revenue and patient dissatisfaction that comes from an engaged tone or an after-hours answering machine. Unlike basic AI receptionists that offer limited functionality, CALLA engages patients in intelligent, lifelike conversations to understand their needs. It can book appointments directly into your clinic's PMS, such as Best Practice or Cliniko, and accurately allocates appropriate consultation durations based on the patient's stated needs. This prevents the common issue of a short appointment being booked for a complex issue, which invariably causes the schedule to run late.
Furthermore, CALLA streamlines the pre-visit process by capturing essential intake information as structured data during the call. This digital collection of pre-visit information significantly reduces administrative time at check-in.[7][8] This data flows directly into the PMS and is available to the clinician before the consult begins. This single, seamless flow of information from the first call into the clinical record is a core advantage of a unified platform, eliminating repetitive data entry and ensuring the entire team is prepared for the patient's arrival.
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