A client check-in / provider notification system can save you thousands of dollars

Have you ever had the experience of doing something a certain way at work, over and over again, it works just fine, nobody is complaining, and you’ve always just taken it as ‘part of the job’, until you realized, “Wait a minute, there’s a better way, and I’m going to find it!”

That was me four months ago. What I’m about to share is such a common experience for anyone whose clients meet them at their office that you might be tempted to think, “Eh, not a big deal, I don’t mind.” But hear me out, because this might just be the optimizer that saves you thousands of dollars in time over the course of the next year and beyond.

I’m a therapist, I own a group practice, and I do mostly in-person sessions. Until recently, my system for welcoming clients had always been to just get up at our scheduled time, walk down the hall, open the door that separates the clinician wing from the waiting room, and then bring them back.

BUT sometimes folks run a few minutes late — life happens. That just meant I needed to pop back and forth between my office and the waiting room two or three times, using the creaky sound of the door or the change in the ambient noise as my guide (or my therapist sixth sense).

Sound familiar?

I’ll admit, when you’re in a profession where you’re sitting most of the day, it’s not a bad thing to get up and move around. But when you run your own business and your time is literally money, it’s not ideal to have empty pockets of time adding up on the regular.

It occurred to me that optimizing those micro moments throughout the day was an opportunity I’d been missing. “I need a client check-in / provider notification system.”

I’d actually thought about this from time to time over the years — wishing I had a light switch system, or a check-in kiosk, or something I hadn’t even heard of before — but I’d never acted on it. Every time I Googled what was out there, I came to the same conclusions: “Overkill… Too expensive… Not worth it.”

I knew what I wanted — a system that felt professional, looked beautiful, minimalist, easy to set up, easy to use, and ultimately, allow me to reclaim those pockets of time I knew I could put to better use for the benefit of my clients, my team, my business, and myself.

So, I started building it myself.

“What if my clients could check in from a tablet in the waiting room but also from their phone if they preferred that? What if they could let me know with just a couple of taps that they were running late… and by how much? What if I could send a quick reply back to a client’s check-in with my own status update, something like, ‘Be right with you,’ or ‘I need just a few more minutes.’”

The more I worked on it, the more excited and determined I got to complete it. I went deep into the ‘focus tunnel’.

By day three my prototype was finished.

I called it Heerio. It was just what I envisioned — a simple client check-in and provider notification app that works across desktop, phone, and tablet, offering clients the ability to check in one of three ways: a mobile app; an iPad-turned-kiosk in my waiting room; or a QR code (which I had no need for, but I did it just for fun).

I went with the iPad option and immediately started using it at my practice, ensuring zero PHI on the front or backend were collected. The results were incredible. Not only did I feel more at peace while awaiting my clients, not only did my clients appreciate the waiting room professional upgrade, but I found that just by having a check-in kiosk I was reclaiming anywhere between 5–10 minutes of uninterrupted time a day between sessions. I was no longer popping in and out of the waiting room every few minutes if someone was running late. I could just wait peacefully until my phone notification went off, doing things that helped me, my clients, and my business. Over the course of a week / month / year, that adds up!

Fast-forward a couple of months and we are moving full-steam ahead. We want to become the premier check-in system for businesses that have simple needs and don’t want to break the bank. Whether you need HIPAA compliance or not, we will be ready!

Interested? We’d love to stay in touch to keep you up to date on our progress and also to hear from you about what your needs are. Join the waitlist at www.heerio.app for early access to the app and a direct line of communication to me, proud founder of Heerio.

This was written by a real human, no AI. Mistakes are all mine.