How Goodwin Health Café Keeps a Busy Spokane Clinic in Sync

Goodwin Health Café is a private practice in Spokane, Washington, run by nurse practitioners who treat mental health conditions, with both psychiatric and primary care nurse practitioners on staff so the medical conditions that contribute to mental illness get addressed too. It is a small psychiatric office and ketamine clinic, with weekly recurring appointments running one to two hours on top of a regular schedule, and a team mascot named Garbanzo. Four years in, the practice had already tried two other communication systems and kept missing calls and losing voicemails. Jael Allen told us what changed when every call, text, fax, and internal message started living in one history with Spruce.

Jael Allen, a formidable force in the office, shared some insights into how the team uses Spruce. Read on!

What kind of work do you do?
We’re a small psychiatric office and ketamine clinic. We have weekly recurring appointments with patients that last 1-2 hours on top of our schedule of regular appointments, so there are a lot of patients coming in for different things and unique treatments. It keeps us busy!

How long have you been doing it?
The practice has been open for four years and boasts a growing team of providers.

What first brought you to Spruce?
We tried two different communication solutions before Spruce and we would miss calls, voicemails got lost, we couldn’t save contacts, and more. As soon as we demo’d Spruce we knew it was a game changer. Spruce delivers a history of all of our calls, texts, faxes, internal messaging, and more. With multiple different nurses, providers, and receptionists, it was exactly what we needed to keep everything straight. Nothing slips through the cracks.

How do you use Spruce at work?
We use Spruce primarily for patient communication, although the internal messaging and paging components are critical for us. Prescription refills is also a big one for our practice and Spruce takes the guesswork out of the equation.

We leverage Spruce for coordinating appointments with patients (and rescheduling appointments, too). And, when it comes to filling scripts, patients text in what they need and we fill it. It’s been automated via the phone tree to make the process even simpler.

Teammate collaboration with internal messaging and paging is beyond helpful because we can page the right team member for the specific need(s) of the patients, which are often diverse. Our team actually uses it as a to-do list! Talking with teammates, updating teams with patient status and medication needs, and alerting patients and providers when scripts will be filled, are all just some of the reasons we rely heavily on this solution.

The whole team has a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in the practice. I would be remiss not to mention the notes feature, which is super cool too because for insurance billing we can notate appeals and denials and provide more color around the situation, then assign a teammate for follow up.

We’ll get at least 40 patients texting/calling us each and every day and 15+ incoming faxes—it would be a lot to manage without Spruce!

What is your favorite Spruce feature?
Internal messaging! We are obsessed with it. We like team to team messaging as well. The way you can schedule messages is also really helpful. With that feature, we don’t have to answer patients in the middle of the night but instead schedule a response during regular business hours. The paging feature is everything, too! And our entire team was able to learn Spruce quickly—even those less tech savvy.

What do you like to do most when you’re not working?!
I love to paint and I have a Golden Doodle named Garbanzo! Spruce actually makes it easier for me to spend time with Garbanzo because I’m able to put work out of my mind.

Learn even more about Goodwin Health Cafe.

New to Spruce? Try it out FREE for 14 days: https://l.sprucehealth.com/startspruce