Private hospitals · Admissions without the phone tag
A cancelled theatre list is the most expensive hour you own.
Referrals arrive by fax, email and portal. Pre-admission forms come back late or not at all. Admissions spends its day chasing paper, and a late cancellation leaves a theatre standing idle.
SMS · Monday 8:12am
Pre-admission pack sent · 14 days before admission
No response after 4 days · reminder due
- Good morning. Your admission is on the 24th and we still need your pre-admission form and health fund details. It takes about ten minutes: [secure link]8:12 am
- Sorry, I started it. I don't know my excess, does that matter?8:40 am
- You can leave that field blank and submit the rest. Our admissions team checks your cover with your fund and will confirm any out-of-pocket amount with you before the day.8:40 am
- Ok, submitting now8:52 am
Pre-admission received · flagged for fund check
Where admissions loses its week
“Two didn't turn up on Thursday. Nobody told us.”
No-shows you find out about at the time
An empty chair or an empty slot cannot be sold later. It is the one loss you can never make back.
How we fix it“We get back to everyone. Usually the next morning.”
Next morning is too late
You are paying to generate leads and then handing them to whoever answers faster. The ad spend is not wasted at the click, it is wasted in the gap after it.
How we fix it“We'd hire someone for it, but the numbers don't work.”
Hiring an admin is expensive here
So the admin does not get hired, and the work lands on the owner at 9pm instead. That is the most expensive hour in the business being spent on the cheapest task in it.
How we fix itWhere the line sits
What runs itself, and what never will.
Half of buying this well is knowing what it must never do. Both columns below are the service. Anyone who only shows you the left one is selling you a risk you will carry, not them.
Runs itself
Without anyone remembering to make it.
- The referral
- Logged the day it arrives, whichever way it arrives, with the referring doctor recorded, so referral patterns stop being a matter of opinion.
- The pre-admission
- Sent on a schedule, chased when it goes quiet, and marked complete when it lands. Admissions sees only what is still outstanding.
- The process question
- Fasting times, arrival times, parking, what to bring, who can collect you. The forty questions a day that do not need a clinician.
- The cancellation
- Escalated the moment it comes in rather than at the morning huddle, so there is a working day to fill the slot instead of an hour.
- The follow-up
- Post-discharge check-in messages send themselves on your protocol, with anything worrying routed straight to a nurse rather than answered.
Always reaches a person
By design, not by exception.
- Anything clinical, without exception
- Conditions, medications, procedures, preparation beyond your standard written instructions. This is the first thing built and the first thing tested.
- Cover, gaps and out-of-pocket costs
- It collects fund and membership details. Informed financial consent is a conversation your staff own, and automating a gap quote would be a real risk to you.
- Consent
- Documents get sent, chased and tracked. What a patient is consenting to is explained by a clinician.
- A patient who is frightened
- Pre-admission anxiety is common and it is not a support ticket. It hands over.
How it lands in your hospital
20 minutes
Step 1: Map admissions
One call. How referrals arrive, where pre-admission stalls, what admissions answers all day, and what must never be automated.
Weeks 2 to 6
Step 2: Build around your protocol
Your timings, your forms, your escalation rules and your clinical boundary. Scoped with your DON or admissions manager, not assumed.
From go-live
Step 3: Clinicians keep the clinical
Chasing, reminding and answering process questions run themselves. Every clinical question goes to a person, and the system is built so it cannot do otherwise.
Before you commit
Count last month's late cancellations and incomplete pre-admissions.
Then price one idle theatre hour. A short call with Ali Ishtiaq will show you where admissions loses its week, and whether software is even the answer.
+61 469 759 353Ali Ishtiaq answers it himself. Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm AEST.