Last updated Aug 31, 2024
We recently spoke with a team of oral health consultants providing quality assurance and oversight for a school-based oral health program across the U.S. state of Illinois. The program involves many different dental providers who take mobile equipment into schools to provide dental services for the students. Before Teamup, these busy consultants had to chase down information from 50+ separate Google calendars to schedule on-site audits. It was time-consuming and frustrating. Now, with Teamup, they have a consolidated view of all the provider calendars in one place, so they can reliably check schedules and do their work efficiently.
Keeping up with separate schedules: “A nightmare”
In order to show up and conduct audits of each provider on a regular basis, the consulting team has to be informed about the scheduled school visits for each dental provider. But each provider in the program manages their own schedule with the schools they serve. They’re required to provide the scheduling information to the OHS team, but keeping up with all those separate schedules was, by itself, a consuming and frustrating task. Before Teamup, the OHS team relied on a collection of separate Google calendars. In the words of Sherri Foran, Public Service Administrator for the Oral Health Section, Illinois Department of Health, it was a nightmare:
Juggling dozens of calendars and chasing down login details not only took extra time from the OHS team, it also affected their ability to conduct audits without alerting the providers ahead of time.
There were other frustrations, as well:
- They also couldn’t see who was changing what on any of the calendars, so following up on last-minute schedule changes was difficult.
- They could not view all the providers on one screen, so checking different schedules meant jumping from one calendar to another.
- They could not export the calendar data to use elsewhere.
Even figuring out which schools were involved in the program was a headache, because they had to rely on the separately managed calendars without a way to bring them all together in one place and compare schedules for all providers. They decided to look for a new scheduling platform, and that’s when they found Teamup.
The Teamup solution: Autonomy without chaos
The OHS team switched to Teamup almost four years ago and haven’t looked back. The system is simple, cohesive, and centrally managed.
Each provider can still set their own schedule, and has their own unique and secure calendar access. And the OHS team is never kept out of the loop, so they can focus on doing their work instead of chasing down information.
Keys to a better scheduling solution
Every scenario is a little different. Here’s how this team makes the most of Teamup for better quality assurance scheduling.
Consistent information capture
Custom event fields provide a structure for getting consistent schedule details, even across multiple providers. Making any field required ensures that the information isn’t overlooked. Filters make it easy to sort data by by those captured details, find events matching multiple criteria, or focus on particular providers by region.
Secure, customized access
The consulting team can see the big picture of all scheduled visits for all providers on one screen. They can also customize access so each consultant sees only the providers in their region, for example.
Meanwhile, providers get secure, customized access to their own schedules, only.
In addition, each member of the consulting team can set up their own notifications for relevant updates. Providers can use the Teamup app to view and update their schedules anywhere.
Scalability and central control
The calendar structure allows them to add more providers to the system as needed. For each new provider, they just create a corresponding sub-calendar and set up access. As the program expands, they can easily build out Teamup to accommodate more providers, schools, and even add entire regions without disruption.
Central control makes scheduling management efficient; the consulting team can oversee calendar access for each provider while still allowing them to do autonomous scheduling. This setup provides the control they need without adding more administrative work.
Getting started with a new system always requires some learning, especially when you’re rolling the system out to many independent providers. With some support from Teamup, this dedicated team has an efficient system in place so they can focus on providing important quality checks and care assurance.
Thanks to Sherri and team for sharing your story with us.
