How GoodFaith Medical Transport Increased Their Contract Rate by 100-200% Through Time Savings

Featured Customer Interview: Goodfaith Medical Transport

Company Size: 50+

Year Established: 1992

Services Offered: Ambulatory, Wheelchair, Gurney

Rather than large hospital systems or extensive ambulance companies, sometimes making a difference in healthcare happens at a small, intimate, and local level. We chatted with Connie Threkel, who is the owner of Good Faith Medical Transport based in San Bernardino, CA. Goodfaith is committed to a high standard of transitional care management and making a difference in their community, and VectorCare has been able to assist them in freeing up time to focus on the care that matters.

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Established in 1992, GOODFAITH MEDICAL TRANSPORT is a San Bernardino NEMT company providing ambulatory, wheelchair, and gurney transportation to patients who need it. The company is owned by Connie Threkel, who boasts over 27 years of experience in the NEMT industry, as well as roles on the St. Bernardine Medical Center Board, and two-time finalist of the Spirit of the Entrepreneur award. Threkel has been able to build the family business from the ground up, focusing strongly on quality of care and the community impact her services provide.

Goodfaith provides employment to a wide range of individuals who may be systematically disadvantaged, allowing them to complete the proper certifications and contribute positively to the community through NEMT employment. All employees are CPR/FA/AED/MAB certified, and “must be ready to work hard and provide good, sympathetic care to every patient”. And the level of care shows: in January, Goodfaith was awarded the “2020 Best of San Bernardino” award in the NEMT services category, a distinction given to local companies that “enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community”.

For Connie, transitional care management is crucial in the well-being of a patient. Transitional Care Management (TCM) addresses the hand-off period between the inpatient and community settings. Well-executed transitions of care are critical to value-based, patient-centered care, which addresses all areas and facets of the patient’s journey.

“There used to be nothing online, innovation has made us more efficient, and the platform experience is better for both us and our customers. We don’t have errors, our success rate is better, and overall: the process is quick. VectorCare has been very helpful for us. I wish everybody would use VectorCare”.

One crucial aspect of TCM is visibility: Threkel constantly searches for new ways to improve the transparency of her operations, from new radio technology, to GPS tracking on crew vans, measuring brake speed, etc. After all, it’s difficult to improve the quality of care without first measuring it, and it is crucial to have as much visibility as possible in the case of an incident. Through using VectorCare, Connie has been able to message directly with care teams and drivers and track the status of a trip at any point in time. (VectorCare also offers an incidents tool, which staff can use to triage and assess an incident as soon as it occurs).

In addition to increasing the level of transparency, VectorCare primarily benefits GoodFaith through the time-saving efficiencies of the platform. Through VectorCare, her team can accept a new transport request in seconds, and answer any further questions about the transport directly from within the platform. Care team members can view the status of the trip instantly, saving her hours of time spent on the phone. She remarks “We hardly ever get phone calls now! Everything is done through the VectorCare portal”. By using VectorCare, Threkel estimates she saves a total of 15 minutes per call every day.

And those trips she’s been saving time on? GoodFaith has been able to almost eliminate human error from the request process. Before, Threkel and her staff spent laborious time on the phone writing down patient information (height, weight, allergies, etc). She illustrates that “it was important to us for document everything about the patient just in case. But really, all that time on the phone is a waste”. With VectorCare,  the platform automatically provided all patient information along with the request in a HIPAA secure format. No phone calls, and no human error.

Instead of spending all her time on phone calls, Threkel now funnels the majority of her time into business development and bidding on new contracts. She estimates that she is now securing 2-3 large contracts per month for GoodFaith, compared to 1 contract per month before using VectorCare.

In closing, Connie credits VectorCare to playing a part in helping propel GoodFaith to a more successful business model: “There used to be nothing online, innovation has made us more efficient, and the platform experience is better for both us and our customers. We don’t have errors, our success rate is better, and overall: the process is quick. VectorCare has been very helpful for us. I wish everybody would use VectorCare”.

To read more from the Patient Care Logistics Journal, check out our latest blog post on how COVID-19 will change the healthcare industry.

For more service provider case studies, learn how Mission ambulance used VectorCare to become their own broker and increase revenue by 20%.