Calculating CHIME’s Financial Benefits

An analysis of how CHIME can deliver value to different clinics based on various circumstances.

We’ve previously provided a case study of the financial benefits of CHIME. This is only one example though; different clinics will capture value in different ways. This page is designed to walk clinics through an analysis of CHIME as it applies to their own circumstances.

Collaboration and Communication

Does your clinic have multiple medical assistants or nurses, working simultaneously, to perform tasks such as the following?

  • cleaning rooms

  • preparing rooms (e.g. bringing in equipment)

  • measuring / weighing patients

  • providing care (e.g. immunizations)

How much down time is there between tasks? Do staff need to return to a home base between each task? Are staff spending time "figuring out" what to do next? Are physicians spending time finding a staff member to help with a patient? Are there dedicated staff in certain roles because they are needed to be "on stand by", even if rarely needed? Are there certain staff who might not be pulling their weight?

Our experience is that CHIME makes support staff more effective, by more than 25%, by reducing downtime between tasks and ensuring tasks are done more efficiently. For example:

  • instead of getting up to clean a single room, rooms can be cleaned "en masse" because CHIME makes clear the current status of all rooms

  • when completing a task, CHIME automatically advises the staff "what to do next"

  • what needs to be done is always visible and readily apparent to all

  • staff can be summoned in real-time, instead of needing to keep staff "on standby"

  • staff are notified immediately when a task needs to be done, via a mobile phone or tablet

With CHIME, a clinic that might require 4 support staff "on the floor" may require only 3, thus reducing costs by a FTE.

Check-in Kiosk

Does your clinic have staff checking in patients? While perhaps 20% of patients require human interaction (e.g. an invoice needs to be paid, contact information updated), in our experience, the bulk (e.g. 80%) can be checked in automatically without any human interaction. This is particularly the case if a clinic "pre-validates" health cards in advance, instead of attempting to validate in real-time.

In our experience a dedicated receptionist can check in up to 20 patients an hour, so for every 150 patients a day, that is the equivalent of a FTE staff member.

Putting in all Together

Our estimate is that for every 150 in-person patient appointments a day, a traditional clinic needs 4 to 5 support staff (e.g. receptionists, patient escorts, and medical assistants and nurses), excluding staff who are responsible for receiving phone calls or performing back office tasks (E.g. a referrals or billing clerk).  We invite clinics to reflect on this estimate; we would be interested in hearing of your own experience.

Once all features of CHIME are deployed, we think this number is comfortably reduced by 1 - 2 FTE. For example, 4 human staff supported by CHIME can easily perform the work of 5 human staff; 3 human staff effectively leveraging CHIME can also do the same in some circumstances. On this estimate, for every 150 patients a day, CHIME can deliver value equivalent to 1 - 2 FTE when it comes to reducing staff alone.

The alternative way to think about it, for some clinics, is to assume there will be no reduction in staffing. Instead, focus on whether, for the same fixed costs and the same payroll, what is the increase in in-person appointments that can be facilitated. Our experience has been that 40 - 60% is readily doable; this case study illustrates that increases of as much as 100% can be achieved.  

Patient Wayfinding

Does your clinic have staff escorting patients to rooms?  If so, consider the time it requires for a staff member to walk to the waiting room, call out a name, wait for that individual to gather their personal belongings, and then follow the staff member to the appropriate room, particularly in the case of potentially elderly patients with reduced mobility.

In our experience a dedicated patient escort can escort up to 15 patients an hour, so for every 100 patients a day, that is the equivalent of a FTE staff member.

Alternatively, does your clinic have MDs retrieving patients from rooms?  If so, your clinic is having your single most expensive human resource do the simplest task in a clinic. If a MD retrieves 20 patients a day, between the time needed to wait for the patient and the fact that even once the patient arrives at the room, the MD now needs to wait for the patient to settle down, take off their jacket, put down their bag, that is a wasted 1 - 2 hours of MD time a day, which, at $150 per hour, is the equivalent of $150 - $300 per MD working day.

Auto Rooming

Does your clinic have staff focused on monitoring the state of a clinic to ensure patients are appropriately roomed at the appropriate time?  In our experience a clinic that that ~30 patients an hour requires a dedicated individual focused on deciding which patient should go where, when, so for every 200 patients a day, that is the equivalent of a FTE staff member.

Room Sharing

Consider a 10 room clinic with fixed costs of $100,000 annually (e.g. rent, utilities, taxes, amortization).

If that clinic can support only 6 MDs each seeing patients 4 full days a week, it is costing ~$17,000 a year per MD. This is commonly the case if only 5 MDs can be in the clinic at a time, each assigned 2 dedicated rooms.

If that clinic can support 9 MDs each seeing patients 4 full days a week, it is costing ~$11,000 a year per MD. CHIME can help achieve this by making it possible for 7 (or potentially more) physicians to comfortably see patients at the same time.

In some ways, this one consideration is the single largest financial benefit of CHIME. For example, a clinic that is able to increase their total physician headcount from 6 to 9 without increasing staffing or leasing additional space may capture more than $150,000 of extra value annually (i.e. $50,000/yr per MD).