"My primary objectives are to drive operational efficiency and cost control without compromising quality, while ensuring consistent, high-level patient service and sustainable growth. I am responsible for building systems that optimize staffing, scheduling, reimbursement, and overhead, empowering leaders to manage performance through clear metrics and accountability, and maintaining a culture that delivers excellent patient experiences."

"Improving the show rate of our patients and minimizing the load this places on the admin team."

"The hiring approach increases payroll and complexity rather than solving the root problem."

"As Director of Business Development, my focus is identifying and implementing initiatives that make the organization more efficient as a whole.... However, the volume of tedious, repetitive tasks made that extremely difficult. Removing or automating those tasks is critical so our teams can focus on patients and higher complexity work."

"There were so many gaps. Non functioning wait lists. Fake patient scheduling portal (placeholders only). Automated patient outreach, etc..."

"Reimbursements are tight. Automating repetitive tasks is no longer optional, it's essential to controlling costs and allowing teams to focus on patient care."

"We have 7 New Patient coordinators working on data entry and no matter what we do we are always 2-3 weeks behind, so by the time that we reach out to patients it's been 4 weeks since we received their referral."

"All of these systems require training high functioning employees to perform time intensive tasks. Unfortunately, our payroll costs keep going up every year much faster than our reimbursement rates."

"We spent over $100K trying to do a massive integration between WebPT and Salesforce and in the end what was promised did not even come close to working. Other than that we had implemented every single operational efficiency we could think of."

"At the time, we were actively struggling with administrative burden and already thinking about AI solutions, but we didn't know who could realistically help... WebPT was experiencing frequent outages that were disrupting scheduling and daily operations."

"Most platforms helped us document and track information, but they didn't actively reduce workload or improve workflows. Software felt reactive instead of proactive, and it often created additional work for staff rather than removing it."

"What drew me towards Penciled was the authenticity of Shawn's intro email. It was short but he touched on a key pain point that we were experiencing which was frustration with the capabilities of our current EMR system, WebPT."

"Meeting Shawn stood out immediately. He was passionate about the product but also very realistic about what Penciled could and couldn't do. That transparency built trust. What really captured our attention was how well they understood WebPT and how closely they worked with existing EMRs instead of trying to replace them."

"I could tell right after the first meeting that Shawn and his team had an understanding of the PT world and the obstacles we face. It didn't feel performative what Shawn was selling... it felt authentic..."

"Penciled had an answer to the two problems that were plaguing us. Exploding payroll costs and no shows. If we continued on our current trajectory it was only a matter of time until our profitability disappeared."

"Originally we signed up to utilize the waitlist since WebPT's waitlist does not work properly and we were using Google Sheets to track waitlisted patients. We weren't having great success with our staff actually working the lists and even when they did, patients were not answering our calls. Automating the waitlist was a no-brainer for us."

"We felt that Penciled would, in the very near future, have services to drastically change our entire administrative process with the ultimate goal of reducing our administrative costs by up to 50%."

"Quickly after we signed up Penciled was already working on the POC portion of the platform but we were hesitant to utilize it because of our complex scheduling rules. The Penciled team quickly came up with solutions to the obstacles we were facing such as high priority patients, medicare patients, patients with two active cases..."

"The biggest immediate impact was the waitlist automation. Patients were being moved into open slots as cancellations happened, without staff having to manually work task lists. That alone saved a significant amount of time and helped protect visit volume."

"Initially we were not able to turn on the auto add for patients so we slowly introduced each department to Penciled and taught them how to manually add in patients. One area that we did struggle with was creating learning material to train our staff..."

"We wanted to implement Penciled immediately, convincing everyone in the organization was more difficult... We are an organization that changes procedures very regularly so our employees are used to that. The hard part is how employees view AI in an adversarial manner."

"The key takeaway for other practices is to be open-minded and ensure the entire team is aligned. Penciled works best when everyone, from admin to clinicians, is reinforcing its use."

"Everyone needs to buy in if it's going to work! You need to be ready to pitch this to your staff and dont take NO for an answer... People do not like change, especially if they think it's going to take over their job... their time is more valuable than just playing phone tag..."

"I was skeptical about provider buy in and patient adoption, especially among elderly patients. That concern was quickly proven wrong. Providers were very supportive, and patients (across all age groups) adapted easily and responded positively to how user friendly the platform is."

"What changes when visits are booked through Penciled instead of manually isn't just volume-it's leverage. Most quality PT businesses can create volume. In a physical therapy business, labor is the single largest and least flexible cost, so every hour spent on a task that can be automated is an hour permanently removed from higher-value work. When a front office team is spending 30-40 hours a week scheduling, confirming, rescheduling, and following up, that time is effectively 'locked' at an hourly wage with no scalability. Penciled converts that fixed labor into a scalable system that operates 24/7 at a fraction of the cost, without adding headcount.

When Penciled books over 50% of our visits and eventually much more, it fundamentally changes the cost structure of the business. Those hours are no longer required just to maintain the same visit volume, which means we don't have to hire additional staff as we grow-and in many cases, we can reallocate existing team members to higher-impact work like patient experience, retention, referrals, and problem resolution. That's where revenue protection and growth actually come from. Owners often worry that AI adds cost to achieve the same outcome, but in reality, it removes the most expensive bottleneck in the operation: human time spent on repeatable tasks. That shift is what allows us to scale efficiently, increase margins, and improve service at the same time."

"If I can schedule and cancel my visits by just sending a text... that is HUGE... nobody wants to sit on hold or leave voicemails and play phone tag..."

"Now the patients' complaints are few and far between which has improved not only care for our patients but the environment that our staff work in."

"Penciled honestly feels like an answered prayer... Penciled works, and our patients love it. No more waiting on hold, no more phone tag-just quick, painless scheduling right at their fingertips."

"Front desk and phone teams shifted from manually scheduling appointments to educating patients on using the platform. Other departments reduced repetitive calling and instead relied on booking links, which saved time and improved efficiency."

"This helps us move through the tasks quicker than before and also gives the patient the ability to see the available slots and make selections on their own rather than going back and forth with one of our team members on the phone for 5-10 minutes."

"Our most conservative estimates show that with increased patient visits we are also saving a minimum of 90 hours of administrative time at this one location."

"We've seen consistent increases in monthly visit volume, reduced no-shows and cancellations, and greater operational stability despite losing administrative staff due to personal reasons. With Penciled's support, we haven't needed to replace all of those positions, which alone has made the investment worthwhile."

"Our DPT's are now DC'ing patients in a timely manner and completing their notes faster... Now with this automation it is vital that they remain current with their notes in order for the system to work correctly which has sparked a fire under them! Which was something we did not expect."

"Before Penciled, the most important priority was simply keeping patients scheduled so their plan of care wasn't disrupted... Administrative survival was often the focus. Now, the priority has shifted to sustainable operations and consistency... With automation supporting scheduling and communication, we're no longer constantly firefighting."

"Before Penciled we just wanted to fill up holes in our schedule, now we want a system that can function with 50% of the administrative staff we currently have."

"Before Penciled, it was crucial for us to stay on top of our tasks and actively work to keep the schedules full. Now that Penciled is helping maintain a consistently full schedule, we can shift our focus to higher-level priorities-like phasing out low-reimbursement insurance contracts..."

"Penciled has absolutely helped us remain on WebPT longer. While not all WebPT issues are within Penciled's control, the automation around reminders, cancellations, and rescheduling has significantly reduced no-shows and short-notice cancellations, some of our biggest frustrations."

"Besides our contract, Penciled is the reason we stayed with WebPT. Period. We have so many EMR's contacting us especially Prompt. We actually feel that our partnership with Penciled puts us ahead of everyone else."

"If it wasn't for Penciled, we would be leaving WebPT by the end of our current contract... They don't seem to be focused on the administrative burden that exists in our field and that is the biggest hurdle that we are up against."

"Data entry automation!!! We receive around 200 faxes per day, and even with a large admin team, we struggle to keep up. Automating intake and referral workflows would drastically reduce delays in patient contact and eliminate missed opportunities."

"100% without a doubt we need new patient demographics automatically imported into Penciled. This is our #1 goal for Penciled right now. I estimated that it will raise our profitability by 3-4% a year."

"Transparency, I want to know the cold hard truth... Can you do what I'm asking or not?"

"Consistently look for ways to improve your current workflows. Ask yourself, can we do this better? Faster?"

"If AI is not the answer to increased efficiency, what is your plan?"

"Those companies that can be more productive with lower payroll costs than their peers will survive and the others will be bought out or fade away."

"100% yes! It was worth it! Reaching patients in a way that is convenient for them is the #1 struggle that we were facing, having this tool available has made a huge positive impact to the lives we serve."

"Penciled is the most exciting thing that has happened to our organization in many years and the only solution we have to combat the mountain of work imposed on us by insurance companies while still providing a high level of service we expect of our organization. It is allowing us to do the tasks we only dreamed of doing at a fraction of the employee costs. Filling up the holes in our schedule while taking massive amounts of responsibilities off of our employees' plates."

"The team at Penciled has blown us away! They made promises and performed beyond those promises. We are now seeing how powerful Penciled is. It has changed how our practice operates on the admin side by greatly reducing the load it places on them just to get patients on the schedule. Our patients have been so happy with the new scheduling system."