When your employees come into our medical centers for reasons that don’t require seeing a clinician (physician, physician assistant, or other medical professional), their visit should be quick and easy. We have learned that, for services like drug screens, breath alcohol tests, and hair collections, the wait times can vary, with some customers reporting wait times of more than 45 minutes.

We believe this can and should be improved and have since developed an innovative program at our Medical Centers called Fast Track, which is designed to reduce the wait times for non-clinician services. We started this program in late 2006, and the results have shown significant improvements in our ability to provide efficient, quality service to your employees.

Upon implementation of Fast Track, we cross-trained our staff on each non-clinician service in an effort to make them more versatile in terms of what they can provide to patients. Additionally, various staff members at our centers serve as timekeepers to constantly monitor wait times.

Since inception of the program, we have seen a 5-minute decline in drug screen turnaround times across all Centers, with some Centers currently averaging a 20-25 minute drug screen turnaround time. Our smaller Centers have become more organized with the Fast Track process as well, utilizing a priority- and time-monitoring system to ensure efficiency of patient flow.

We are encouraged that this program will continue to decrease the backlog in wait times and make your employees’ visits to a Concentra Medical Centers location more efficient and satisfactory.

What does the Fast Track process consist of?

• Upon arrival for services that do not require seeing a clinician, Fast Track patients sign-in on a separate sign-in sheet from regular patients and fill out the necessary paperwork.
• These patients are then directed to a separate area, and their information is processed by a designated staff member. Priority is based on arrival time.
• Timekeepers monitor the wait times and keep patients updated with information on when the next medical assistant is available.
• Medical assistants perform all tests on the patients. Note that if a patient is unable to produce a specimen at that time, he or she will be asked to return to the waiting room so the next Fast Track patient can be served.
• After the procedure, patients are directed back to the waiting area to check out. The medical assistant completes all required paperwork and updates the computer system to show that the patient has checked out.