Nirschl Orthopaedic Center had a growth problem — the good kind. Bringing on three new providers grew its medical staff to a team of 11 across two locations.

Patient demand was surging, but the phones couldn't keep up.

Three to four staff members were fielding 3,000 to 5,000 inbound calls every month. Another 450 monthly appointment requests — many submitted after hours when no one was there to respond — piled up for manual follow-up each morning. Front desk staff, whose job is to care for the patients standing in front of them, were getting pulled into the call center's overflow.

"People were feeling like maybe they couldn't do their own positions because they were worrying about taking on a call center workflow," says Emmie Leal, Marketing and Physician Liaison at Nirschl Orthopaedic Center (NOC).

But the problem wasn't just volume. It was control.

Most online scheduling tools promise to reduce phone calls, a sales pitch NOC had heard before. But their previous tool couldn't schedule patients with the precision their providers required.

A patient with a hand injury might end up on the wrong provider's calendar. Workers' comp cases that needed pre-authorization could slip through without a phone screening. Insurance types that required special handling had no guardrails.

These shortcomings were dealbreakers for NOC’s physicians. If providers can't trust the system, adoption suffers — and the call center (and front office staff) stays buried.

NOC needed a tool that could open the front door to patients without compromising control of the schedule.

What tipped the decision

Evaluating multiple solutions, three factors set NextPatient apart for NOC:

• Specificity. NextPatient's scheduling rules can be configured at the provider level — by visit reason, by insurance type, even by body part. A patient selecting "Hand/Wrist" only sees Dr. Root's availability. Another patient with a workers' comp case is prompted to call the office. Each provider's preferences are respected, automatically.
• Integration. NextPatient reads availability directly from NOC’s existing ModMed scheduling templates. No separate calendar to manage. No syncing issues. One source of truth.
• Support. Emmie is quick to credit Michael, her dedicated NextPatient account manager, as a differentiator. "Even with the snowstorm we just had, I emailed Michael, and within 10 minutes, I got a response," she says. "'I need to send a broadcast message. How can I make this happen for our patients across all the offices?' He's always there."

That broadcast message, incidentally, took a task that would have required the call center to phone patients one by one and reduced it to a few clicks.

The rollout: reminders first, then scheduling

Implementation took about a month — deliberately. The NextPatient team met with every provider individually to understand their templates, timing preferences, and workflow. Then Emmie's team rolled features out in phases.

Appointment reminders went live first, giving patients (and staff) time to get comfortable with the new system. Self-scheduling and appointment types followed a week or two later. Recalls, waitlist management, and broadcast messaging came next.

"Overall, it was a lot of little detailed work," Emmie says, "but NextPatient definitely made it a seamless experience for us."

The numbers after 90 days

Nirschl Orthopaedic Center's first three months with NextPatient set the stage for future success:

55% of appointments booked online are new patients — people who find the practice, like what they see, and schedule without ever calling.

44% of online bookings happen after hours — nights, weekends, and holidays when the call center is closed and those appointment requests used to pile up.

1.2% no-show rate for online bookings — compared to an industry average of 11.5–18%. When patients book on their own terms, they show up.

97 waitlisted patients got earlier appointments, seen an average of 13 days sooner — keeping provider schedules full and patients happy.

4.9-star Google rating with 680+ reviews — averaging an eye-popping 10+ reviews each day and the part of the story Emmie gets most excited to share.

From one review to 175 in three months

Before NextPatient, NOC’s review strategy was, essentially, hope. "We solely depended on just Google and Yelp at people's pleasing," Emmie says. No post-visit prompts. No systematic outreach. Their newer Tysons location had been open for a full year and had exactly one 5-star review.

NextPatient's automated review requests changed that math overnight. A text message goes out two hours after each visit — timed while the patient experience is still fresh — with a simple prompt to share feedback. No extra work for staff.

In three months, the Tysons location went from one review to 175.

Reviews are more than a vanity metric for NOC. Emmie describes the impact as a flywheel effect: "Someone looks up 'orthopedics near me.' Because of those reviews, now Nirschl ranks a little bit higher on Google. They click on us and say, 'Oh my gosh, they have 4.9 out of 5 stars. They must be great.' They read through those reviews, and then that leads them to the website, and — 'Oh my gosh, you can also book online.' It's wins across the board."

Each piece feeds the next. Reviews drive search rankings. Rankings drive website traffic. The website converts visitors into booked appointments.

The boost nobody expected: office morale

Ask Emmie about ROI, and she'll give you the numbers. But ask her what surprised her most, and she talks about how people feel.

“The front desk’s job, realistically, isn't to schedule appointments,” says Emmie. “That's what a call center's for. But when the call center's so overwhelmed, that's who it falls on. So I would say NextPatient has boosted office morale overall. When you feel a weight off your shoulders, it helps to know that something is working."

Front desk staff are able to focus on the patients in front of them. And because of patients’ in-person feedback as well as results like the number of new patients scheduling online, providers have fully bought in too.

"It's the same as going to self-checkout instead of waiting in a line for someone to do it for you," Emmie says. "NextPatient acts as that self-checkout as opposed to waiting 10 minutes on hold for someone to do it for you."

The bottom line

When asked what advice she'd give to other practices considering online scheduling, Emmie doesn't hedge:

"Even if you don't think it's an immediate need, would it be something that would benefit you long term? I truly believe this is one of the greatest investments my practice has made. The numbers show it. People's reactions show it."

Then she adds: "I'm like NextPatient's biggest brand ambassador."

Given the results, it's easy to see why.

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