Gwinnett County WIC in Lawrenceville, Georgia is a WIC branch within the East Metro Health District and provides nutrition education and supplemental foods to low income families who are at risk for nutritional deficiencies. One of 19 Georgia WIC districts, East Metro Health District has seen a tremendous participant growth rate of over 12% each year for the past 10 years, and generates the highest number of WIC participants and service expenditure in the entire state.
Situation
Cathy Staples, Clinic Administrator of the Gwinnett County Public Health Services, knew she had a waiting and lobby flow management problem as her staff tried to serve the growing numbers of participants with the same space and processes. In this lobby, the participants experienced long wait times, a noisy and crowded environment and insufficient information as to when they would be called next.
Solution
Associates at East Metro Health wanted to automate the arrival and call-up process to create a more orderly waiting area. They also wanted to streamline the overall participant visit to better account for the service level and staff productivity. The new process consists of a Qmatic’s Customer Journey Management solution.
Arrival
When a participant arrives, they are greeted by the receptionist who enters them by category into the Qmatic system. Two identical WIC tickets are printed; one is attach to the participant’s folder and one is handed to the participant. The receptionist uses the Qmatic system to record additional information about the patient such as date of birth, number of children and other necessary data that staff will need to know when servicing this participant.
Call-up system
When a service counter staff is available, they press “next” on their Qmatic software. This signals the monitor to display and announce the ticket number that was automatically selected to match the criteria and category for that service station. The participant then proceeds to the counter number shown on the monitor and posted above the counter space.
Streamline Multiple-Service Appointments
Once the service transaction is completed, the service counter staff records the type of service conducted and either closes out the ticket number for completion of visit or transfers the ticket number to the next service area. The folder and participant move to the next round of transactions until the visit is completed.
Results
With Qmatic, arrival entry and call up for service is automated and allows the participants to move through the service areas themselves and helps to increase processing capacity. With an average of 350 single visits a day, the average wait time dropped from 1 hour to 30 minutes in the WIC program and from 2 hours down to 30-45 minutes in the Health Department programs. Management can account for every participant in each phase for their visit and knows real-time staff productivity.
Using the Qmatic platform, Cathy can monitor the lobby from her office and is notified of all queuing situations that need immediate attention.
Qmatic’s solution also provides senior management with statistical information that identifies arrival patterns, wait and service times, participant needs, and details of the entire WIC appointment process from arrival to departure. This data is used for establishing funding requirements for additional staff and resourcing
