How Everlight Radiology Saved 2.5 Days of Data Entry

Everlight Radiology is an innovative teleradiology business. By using radiologists around the world, Everlight Radiology is able to “follow the sun” and provide radiology services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Established in Australia as Imaging Partners Online in 2006 with a UK presence in 2010 as Radiology Reporting Online, the two groups merged in 2017 and rebranded as Everlight Radiology.

“At any point, the list of work is readily available for the Operations team to assign radiologists,” says Eliza Macgregor, Strategic Project Manager and Head of Global Scheduling. “Hospitals can send in scans from the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia, and one of Everlight’s radiologists will provide an expert report.”

But achieving that first-class, global customer service isn’t easy. In fact, it’s quite complex. In an average week, Everlight Radiology schedules up to 7,500 hours spread across five different 24/7 rosters.

With their commitment to quality service remaining a priority, ensuring appropriate coverage across their schedule is essential.

Everlight was struggling with scheduling.

Consultant radiologists, the finance team, the planning analyst team, the scheduling team, and the operations coordinators. More than 750 employees were using their scheduling tool, across multiple time zones, with most doctors working remotely.

“We had two instances of our previous scheduling platform and they were set up slightly differently,” says Eliza. “But the previous platform didn’t cope with the time zones we were using. Radiologists and schedulers had to do all the time conversions in their head which was complicated, time-consuming, and could lead to human error.”

But that wasn’t the only thing taking too much time.

The original system required about a minute to load and that included an extra minute for every change that needed to be made. For example, if the location or time needed to be updated, it would require another minute wait to update it. In the UK, it took around 3 minutes to load. For some, it required up to 40 minutes per month to maintain information per weekly roster. All that time was adding up to a lot of frustration and downtime.

On top of that, even simple changes to the schedule required taking screenshots and sending them via email to the team.

“It was just killing our team,” Eliza says. And in a company that prides itself on its efficiency, this was one area where there was an obvious need for improvement.

As a global business, that wouldn’t work. Something needed to change. The systems needed to be brought together and the end results needed to load much faster. Everlight began to look for something they could use to create a faster, more user-friendly experience.

“One of the major reasons that we moved to Deputy is because we had huge latency issues with our previous platform,” says Eliza. “For our team, their experience was that they would select a roster to load and then they’d go and make a cup of coffee while they waited.”

Things changed drastically after the team onboarded Deputy. With the new solution implemented, Everlight saved themselves roughly 2.5 days per month of lag and loading time.

On top of that, accuracy can remain a top priority. “We measure our accuracy,” says Eliza, “In fact, for my team, one of the KPIs is how right do you get the roster.” According to Eliza, Deputy’s streamlined tools that automatically calculate time zones and pay rates help the teams get the roster right.

And while Deputy’s interface and backend are easy to use, Eliza notes that the platform has the capability to cope with the complexity of Everlight’s business.

“When we were first in lockdown, Deputy’s support team worked so hard,” says Eliza. “I remember thinking ‘Anyone who's willing to work that hard for me, I have all the time in the world for them.’”

Changing restrictions, lockdowns, and demand aren’t keeping Everlight from delivering quality service to their clients around the world. And Deputy is there to help them for every schedule, every scan, in every time zone.