Customer Solution Case Study
/ Therapy Center Gains 15 Hours a Week in Higher Productivity from Windows 8 Pro Devices
“We’re saving 10 to 15 hours a week in documentation time by using our Windows 8 Pro tablets.”
Neil Chasan, Founder, Sports Reaction Center
Sports Reaction Center provides physical therapy services and injury treatment for athletes. It recently deployed Lenovo ThinkPad Twist Ultrabooks running the Windows 8 Pro operating system to introduce process efficiencies and innovation. With these new devices, Sports Reaction Center has reduced paper-related tasks by 15 hours a week, which improves work-life balance, enables better patient care, and gives the business more time to develop new services.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published August 2013
Business Needs
Neil Chasan founded Sports Reaction Center 30 years ago to provide physical therapy services focused on the injury, recovery, and training needs of athletes. Chasan has always used technology to run his business and tries to stay current with tech innovations both to achieve maximum productivity and to serve patients who work in the many nearby technology firms. By 2013, the nine-employee company had 12 PCs (3 desktops and 9 laptops) and a PC dedicated to Intuit QuickBooks. It also used a cloud-based patient management system.
Even though his office bristled with technology, Chasan knew it was time for another leap forward. Therapists still took notes on paper when meeting with patients, since it afforded them a greater level of intimacy than having a big computer screen between them and patients. But therapists spent hours a day transcribing their handwritten notes into the patient management system, usually at night during off-hours.
If Chasan or Beth Hall, the Office Manager, wanted to work on a document from home, they either had to email the document to themselves or drive back into the office to put it on a thumb drive. Data security was always a concern, with patient records moving between paper, electronic systems, and portable devices.
Solution
To streamline business processes and more efficiently care for patients, Sports Reaction Center deployed four Lenovo ThinkPad Twist Ultrabooks running the Windows 8 Pro operating system. Physical therapists take the convertible laptop-tablet computers into exam rooms with them and record notes electronically, eliminating the need for later transcription. “We can do more than take notes; we can send out doctor referrals, set up the next appointment, and email the patient a copy of their exercise plan right there on the spot,” says Laura Mickelson, Doctor of Physical Therapy at Sports Reaction Center. “Unlike a big, clunky laptop, the tablet is so small that it doesn’t get between us and our patients.”
Adds Kim Tess, Physical Therapy Assistant at Sports Reaction Center, “The tablets are also easy to take with us as we move from exam room to gym, where we go through exercises with patients. We have all the exercises on the tablet and can check them off as we go rather than trying to remember and recording them later.”
Hall uses her Windows 8 Pro convertible tablet to create spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, conduct bookkeeping activities, and fill out office orders using the touch interface. She loves that the device is lightweight and mobile and that everything is laid out with easy-to-use tiles. When she gets to a data entry–intensive task, she switches to the keyboard interface. “If I’m in a public location, I can switch the ThinkPad Twist from tablet to laptop mode so that others can’t see confidential data on the screen,” Hall says.
The clinic stores documents on SkyDrive, which makes it available anytime, from any Internet connection. When Chasan or Hall need patient information after hours, they access it with a few quick taps on the tablet screen.
Sports Reaction Center plans to use the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature in Windows 8 Pro to help keep patient data secure as it moves around the office and between devices. “We gather personal data for 20 new patients a week, and it all needs to be protected,” Chasan says. “If someone breaks in and steals our computers, that data will be protected with Windows 8 Pro.” The business plans to add three more Windows 8 Pro tablets in the next 12 months.
Benefits
By deploying Lenovo ThinkPad Twist Ultrabooks running Windows 8 Pro, Sports Reaction Center has dramatically improved the efficiency of its office, gaining about 15 hours a week in improved productivity and improving work-life balance for employees. Sports Reaction Center employees also now have anytime, anywhere access to documents through SkyDrive and can better serve technology-minded patients.
“We’re saving 10 to 15 hours a week in documentation time by using our Windows 8 Pro tablets,” Chasan says. “This gives our employees better work-life balance and lets us spend more time with patients.” Also, with more time freed up during the workday, employees can spend time developing new services that make the clinic more helpful to patients and more competitive. For example, Sports Reaction Center is launching an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) risk assessment and prevention center, and therapists now have more time to research treatments, design programs, and talk with patients about the new offering.
For all the benefits Sports Reaction Center has already realized with Windows 8 Pro, Chasan says his business has just scratched the surface. “We’ve just begun to explore the Windows Store for apps that could make us more efficient and enhance the business,” he says. Therapists want to add a stylus and handwriting recognition program so that they can make notes by hand on the tablet; Mickelson and Tess have their eye on the library of healthcare apps—such as a human anatomy app—that they could use to educate patients.
“We operate in a very tech-savvy area, and our patients like the fact that we’re tech-minded and staying current,” Chasan says. “The idea of having technology in the patient room is getting more popular, and patients even expect it. Windows 8 Pro helps us serve our patients better and run more efficiently. It’s a very cool addition to our office.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published August 2013