How a Physiotherapy business is providing better care for aged and disability patients and improving their allied health business with Microsoft Teams

When KEO Physio Group was ready to scale, they knew they needed to change the way they worked, they just weren’t sure how. So the team was blown away when Adopt & Embrace introduced Office 365. Especially by how much Microsoft Teams has transformed their business. It has in their words “changed the game”.

With coaching from the Award-winning team at Adopt & Embrace they have implemented an infrastructure that has enabled them to work more efficiently and more flexibly. They’re now able to grow as opportunity presents itself and proactively create a culture that improves staff retention.

A different model

In an industry dominated by solo practitioners and high employee churn. KEO Physio Group is breaking the mould. Their model revolves around two key pillars:

1. letting clinicians focus on health work by having a strong support team to manage the high administrative load; and
2. creating a culture that values employees, placing a premium on trust, autonomy, and flexibility.

Growth held back by inefficiencies

The business is growing fast and is poised to take advantage of opportunities created by Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). But until the introduction of Office 365, they didn’t have the infrastructure to match that growth potential.

The team used to manage their work by emailing attachments back and forth with up to ten rounds of revisions. They had hundreds of clients so it was easy to miss something and was wasting large amounts of time. Nigel Tadros, director at KEO shares a poignant example of how this affects real people:

“We just lost three months on the order for a wheelchair for a severely disabled client. The email was sitting with a bureaucrat to be actioned and we hadn’t noticed they were holding it up because it was just one email among hundreds. It’s human error, it happens, but that has a huge impact on someone who can ill afford it. Microsoft Teams has helped us to streamline our processes and get things moving much faster. And when we can move faster it impacts people’s lives.”

Remote workforce activated

KEO has a workforce that is mostly remote – clinicians are most often on-site with clients and some of them might not go into the office for a month. The implementation of Microsoft Teams has completely changed the way they operate.

“The conversation flows now, no matter where people are. Teams allows our clinicians to speed up coordination of important equipment and care for aged and disabled clients. They don’t have to wait days at a stretch to come in and lodge paperwork. That means we’re getting care for vulnerable people faster,” says Nigel.

He reports it has been especially helpful with the influx of work coming from the NDIS.

“We’re increasing the number of clients we work with rapidly and some might have 4-5 projects as part of their case – imagine the emails we used to send! Now we set up a channel with all the paperwork, we work on one document and @mention each other when it’s ready for review and action.”

Meetings transformed with Microsoft Teams

Nigel is also enthusiastic about the impact Microsoft Teams meetings has had. A lot of KEO clients require a team for their care – a project manager, an administrator, a physiotherapist, and an occupational therapist, often based in different locations.

Previously, they would all have to travel to the office for a client briefing before travelling again – often in the opposite direction – to meet the client. Now they all video in from wherever they are, collaborating and capturing actions live. [bctt tweet=”Microsoft Teams meetings are saving time and reducing stress.” username=”adoptandembrace”] Nigel says:

“Teams meetings have been sensational! Now, one person sits on the sofa with their dog; another person is in the office, another’s in her home with her dog beside her also. We all video in, we screenshare our meeting minutes. Then from there, our administrator punches everyone’s actions into Planner.”

Winning the culture war

With the average physiotherapist lasting just two years in a job before moving on, KEO is hoping to build an environment that bucks that trend.

Head office may not see some staff for a month, so having video interaction, chat-based collaboration and location flexibility is helping to change the whole team dynamic.

“This will change the game in terms of staff retention – this doesn’t exist within our industry. For example, we think it will give us an edge for people returning to work after children. They can focus on the clinical work they love without getting bogged down with administration. And they can manage work alongside the very real life they have going on in tandem.”

For more information on how Adopt & Embrace can help you with Microsoft Teams implementation and adoption, we’d love to hear from you! Email us at engage@adoptandembrace.com or browse our site to learn more.

Image credits:
Header: by Todd Cravens on Unsplash
InPost: by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash