How Marietta Eye Clinic Saves 1,500 FTE Hours with Clearwave’s Smart Scheduling

By Blakely Roth | January 29, 2025

With 13 locations across the metro-Atlanta area, Marietta Eye Clinic sees thousands of patients every month for all types of vision services, from routine eye exams to complex implant surgery. With 32 doctors seeing a range of appointment types, scheduling management can get complex. Marietta Eye Clinic turned to online scheduling to reduce call center staffing burdens while providing patients with the booking access they require. 

About 

• Practice Management System: ModMed 

• Number of Locations: 31 

• Number of Providers: 13 

The Scheduling Challenge

Dustin Bostwick, Senior Marketing & Communications Manager at Marietta Eye explains how call volume impacts operations, “We wanted to take some of the pressure off our call center agents. With so many locations and at high-frequency call times, like Mondays or at the end of year, the volume is overwhelming. Implementing a tool that could offload some of that burden was crucial.” 

Marietta Eye was looking to reduce the strain on call center agents while also providing patients with a 24/7 scheduling option outside of regular office hours. Bostwick recalls, “We knew patients preferred the flexibility to schedule on their own time. Giving them this option directly on our website helps us address that need.” 

The Solution

To keep up with modern patient demands and competition, Marietta Eye launched Clearwave Scheduling. Migrating a portion of phone traffic over to their online scheduler helps Marietta Eye keep staff workloads manageable. Bostwick shares an example of the daily impact, “Mondays used to be overwhelming. Now in just one day alone, we’ve seen upwards of 87 appointments scheduled directly by patients online. If you estimate each booking at five minutes per call, then we’ve already saved over 7 hours.” 

The Clearwave Impact

Today, Marietta Eye’s doctors see consistently full schedules, while staffing burdens around scheduling management have dropped significantly. In just one year, Marietta Eye Clinic saw over 18,000 appointments made online, saving their scheduling employees around 1,500 hours, given that same five-minute per-call estimate.  

Bostwick compares Marietta Eye’s success to what he’s seen other practices offer, “Patients really do like the ability to book appointments in real time. Other practices may say they offer something like this, but in reality, it’s really just a form. Request-only scheduling doesn’t solve the staffing problem, it just creates more work on the back end, and it’s frustrating for patients to wait to be called back. I am glad we can offer our patients a scheduling tool that they find helpful!” 

Marietta Eye’s ability to customize scheduling workflows ensures they can meet provider requirements and provide seamless patient experiences. Bostwick shares the approach, “Initially, we opened online scheduling for routine exams. As we started to see the success of the tool, we started adding in other appointment types, incorporating more doctors and removing some of the initial barriers we put in.” 

Going on he says, “We used to avoid letting patients book day-of appointments, but as we’ve gotten more familiar with the tool and leveraged Clearwave’s guidance, we have now opened up those same-day slots and seen no issues.” 

Patient-Powered Results

• 18,284 Online bookings made in one year 

• 1,500 FTE hours saved by reducing phone bookings 

• 13% Online bookings made by new patients 

• 87% Online bookings made by existing patients 

• 28% Online bookings made after hours 

Read Marietta Eye Clinic’s full story here.

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