Customer Stories

How ResQ Keeps EmblemHealth Cool and Ensures Exceptional Patient Experiences

Key successes

Company Background

EmblemHealth is one of the largest nonprofit health insurers in the United States, serving over 3 million members in the New York metropolitan area. They’ve been around since 2006 and have over 43 medical centers dedicated to providing high-quality, affordable health care coverage and services.

We sat down with John Foberg, Infrastructure Director, and Cody Walthall and Jimmy Damiani, Infrastructure Manager, who are in charge of the day-to-day operations related to HVAC, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, in addition to capital projects. As a team they are in charge of ensuring all EmblemHealth facilities are up and running and keeping customers cool as it relates to temperature.

Challenge

Service Tickets Became Overwhelming, Leading to Poor Customer Experiences

EmblemHealth’s infrastructure management team previously used a maintenance program software that lacked the seamless efficiency of ResQ. The older system was clunky and complicated, making it difficult to manage daily tasks and work orders. With 40+ medical centers to oversee, effective communication was critical, but multiple lines of communication often led to delays.

Service tickets, the core of their daily operations, were particularly challenging to manage. The team received dozens of phone calls daily, which was time-consuming and inefficient. This disjointed communication process hindered their ability to quickly decide whether to handle issues in-house or send them off to vendors, delaying critical repairs and maintenance.

In emergency situations, such as HVAC failures, the lack of initial seamless communication from medical centers caused significant delays. These delays were detrimental, especially when patient care and comfort were at stake. Time was of the essence, and the quicker they could receive and act on information, the more effective their response.

"The bread and butter of what Cody and I do are service tickets. We have 40 medical centers. There's a lot of people in those medical centers, a lot of equipment, a lot of things that can go wrong. So service orders, service tickets for a problem is our biggest issue. And ResQ, instead of having to get dozens of phone calls every day, ResQ sort of very, in an organized way, gives us an inbox full of service tickets that we can respond to when we can. And it's either something that we can assign to ourselves, it gives us the opportunity to assign it to ourselves or to assign it to a vendor."

Jimmy Damiani

Infrastructure Manager, EmblemHealth

Solution

Since implementing ResQ, the team at EmblemHealth has been able to solve this communication challenge, while also improving vendor relationships and financial management.

Seamless Internal Communication

ResQ helps the EmblemHealth team to streamline internal communication, which leads to faster response times. With just a few clicks, the team can see everything that needs to be done and easily dispatch resources. Whether assigning tasks to themselves or to a vendor, ResQ makes it straightforward. The platform allows team members to track the status of assignments, ensuring everyone is on the same page and nothing is overlooked.

“So in just a few clicks, I can see the big picture of everything that needs to be done by us from the centers, and then from there, ResQ has made it really easy to then dispatch accordingly.” - Cody Walthall

Improved Vendor Relationships

With ResQ, Emblem’s team has been able to quickly dispatch work orders to vendors and get them on site.

“If I have a ticket I need to assign to Brooklyn Plumbing, like say I need a new hot water heater, it takes me 15 seconds to issue a ticket and get it to the vendor and the system's active communication, I can see if there's something in the notes that they've accepted it or they need more information or if there's an access issue. So pretty slick.” - John Foberg

“So in their last program that they used, it was just difficult. It was, “Dan, did you get the service call yet?” “No, I didn't get the service call yet.” “Hold on. I'll call the platform.” “I can't get a hold of the platform.” The old platforms wouldn't do what they were supposed to do fast enough and it's about getting me heat right now. Fix that leak right now. So in the past I'd be at the location before the platform even sent me the call. Now the platform's right on it. I have the call. Everything moves fast and it all corresponds with each other.” - Dan Melville, Brooklyn Ave Plumbing

Better Financial Management & Decision Making

In addition to streamlining their work order management process, ResQ has further enabled John to streamline their financial processes.

“There's two major steps in the daily portal. One is quotes requiring approval, and then there's the invoice portion. Both of those are easy to use. They show up bright and they flag whatever's applicable to my trade and then it's just a matter of clicking on a quote for a proposal approving it, and then the invoicing is fairly simple.” - John Foberg

The fact that they’re now easily digitizing all invoices also means that they can go back and see if there’s invoice issues, or if they’re going over budget.