DOCPACE® | Case Study: Access Health Louisiana

Case Study:

How FQHC Access Health Gained Complete Visibility Into Daily Operations

Real-time patient flow data helped managers coach staff, optimize schedules, and reallocate front desk time to revenue-critical tasks

Interview with Kaycee Donnaud, Assistant Vice President of Operations, Access Health Louisiana

Challenge

Access Health Louisiana, a mission-driven, multi-site FQHC serving communities across the state, has long been committed to delivering high-quality, patient-centered care. Like many growing organizations, they faced operational challenges that stemmed from a lack of real-time data, making it difficult to fully understand and address the root causes of delays and inefficiencies.

Navigating patient flow with limited visibility:

“Before, I had to manually try to figure out [what it was] that hung [the patient] up,” explains Kaycee Donnaud, Assistant Vice President of Operations.

Without a centralized view of the patient journey, analyzing timestamp data required time-consuming, manual effort.

Maintaining accountability across a busy care team: With a high volume of patients and multiple sites, it was difficult to consistently verify where workflow slowdowns were happening, despite concerns from providers about recurring delays.

Overburdened front desk workflows: Staff were spending hours each day calling patients to confirm appointments—time that could have been redirected toward revenue-driving tasks like Medicaid eligibility checks and managing 340B pharmacy workflows.

Revenue leakage from no-shows: A persistent reported 20% no-show rate added additional strain. Without a reliable way to predict which patients might miss their appointments, the team had to balance productivity with the risk of overbooking.

Despite these challenges, Access Health remained focused on improving operations—and took proactive steps to find a better way forward.

Solution

To strengthen their operations and better support staff across their clinics, Access Health implemented DOCPACE®, the only AI schedule optimization suite that delivers complete visibility into the patient journey, from check-in to discharge. Seamlessly integrated with their athenahealth EHR, DOCPACE® allowed teams to access real-time insights without disrupting existing workflows.

A clearer view of the patient experience:

With DOCPACE®, Access Health gained a centralized dashboard that tracked each step of the patient visit (how long a patient spent at check-in, with the medical assistant, and with the provider) eliminating the need for manual analysis and guesswork.

Smarter, more confident daily huddles:

By incorporating chronic no-show data into morning huddles, Kaycee and her team empowered medical assistants to proactively adjust schedules, including strategically double-booking when appropriate, without overburdening providers.

Streamlined patient communication:

Automated appointment confirmations and reminders reduced manual outbound calls, allowing front desk staff to refocus their time on revenue-driving initiatives like Medicaid eligibility and 340B pharmacy coordination.

This shift toward data-driven, proactive workflows marked a turning point for Access Health: freeing up time, improving team coordination, and ultimately enhancing care delivery.

The Results

Just months after implementing DOCPACE®, Access Health Louisiana shifted from reactive operations to a proactive, data-driven model, empowering staff with insights that improved both performance and patient experience.

Reduced no-shows, increased efficiency:

No-show rates were reported to have declined from 20% to 16–17% as automated reminders and more strategic scheduling took effect—helping ensure providers’ time was better utilized and patients received timely care.

Clarity over assumptions:

“...now we can say, ‘Actually, according to the report, only three percent were late.’”says Donnaud.

With reliable data, teams could shift away from assumptions and focus on facts, bringing a new level of transparency and trust to daily operations.

Improved staff accountability and engagement: Having access to their own performance metrics helped both providers and medical assistants naturally adjust their pace, creating smoother handoffs and more efficient visits.

Elevated front desk capacity: With DOCPACE® managing patient communications, front desk staff were freed up to tackle revenue-critical priorities like Medicaid updates, 340B pharmacy workflows, and sliding scale documentation.

Smarter scheduling decisions: Armed with predictive insights, the team could proactively adjust the schedule based on patient reliability:

Looking Ahead

Access Health is now planning to install real-time performance monitors in medical assistant stations to give staff visibility into daily patient flow at a glance. For Kaycee and her team, the impact goes far beyond metrics.

“It just helps us understand what’s going on in the actual clinic—what the patient is really experiencing.”