Smooth Operations: Lessen Helps a Medical Aesthetics Chain Cut Costs and Elevate the Patient Experience

Overview

In the competitive medical aesthetics space, the patient experience is paramount. A pristine, fully functional, and welcoming environment is crucial for patient confidence and satisfaction. But maintaining that environment in a busy facility can be challenging, and highly trained staff need to spend their time on patients, rather than on plumbing or HVAC issues.

To address these issues one major medical aesthetics player turned to Lessen. The client, an industry leader with more than 350 locations nationwide, needed a partner who could get work done fast the first time, while minimizing the burden on in-house employees and keeping costs under control.

Lessen delivered. Priority work orders are now completed 1.5 days faster on average, with a higher first- time fix rate. That resulted in better clinic uptime – enhancing patient access and driving topline growth. And while quality improved, costs declined, yielding over $650,000 in annual savings.

Partnership for success

Initially, Lessen was brought in to support targeted reactive needs across the client’s facilities. At the time, facility operations were managed through a network of several external partners. The Lessen team worked to get a detailed understanding of the client’s unique needs, which included spotless reception and waiting areas, and medical-grade cleanliness in treatment rooms.

Lessen used that knowledge to bring the best of its technology and vendor network to bear. With over $200M invested in its work order management solution, Lessen configured work order intake and scheduling processes to meet the unique needs of a high-end business that couldn’t afford downtime. At the same time, Lessen leveraged its robust network of more than 30,000 vendors to ensure that every location had high quality coverage, with technicians who could move quickly and professionally to address issues before they brought facilities offline.

The longer the client and Lessen worked together, the closer the partnership grew. The client eventually chose to consolidate all facility management responsibilities with Lessen. Now, when an issue arises at a treatment center, employees dispatch work directly through the Lessen platform. That empowers local teams to move faster but still gives corporate the ability to set decision rules, approve quotes, and maintain visibility into the process.

Faster work at lower cost

The results were dramatic. The client started to see work get done faster, at a lower total cost. That translated into direct savings, higher facility uptime, and more satisfied patients and employees:

• Total reactive maintenance spend declined by 24%
• 77% of work orders were fixed with one trip, resulting in cost savings and minimizing facility disruptions
• On-site teams gave high marks to the work completed by Lessen vendors, with a 4.5/5 average work order rating

The partnership also delivered significant overhead savings. With full operational responsibility now in Lessen’s hands, the client made the decision to right-size their internal facility support center, saving more than $500,000 in overhead expense. At the same time, Lessen’s scalable support and vendor network meant that the client could move faster to open new facilities, with confidence that repair and maintenance needs would be handled seamlessly on day one.

2.5 years into the partnership, Lessen now manages the full facilities budget, across separate line items for reactive, recurring, and insurance-related expenses. That ensures Lessen stays accountable to reduce total costs to maintain, while the client team maintains visibility and control over service levels. It also means that the client has more time to focus on growing the core business.

Unique solutions for a unique business

The partnership did more than just clear tickets faster – it built a solution that reflected the unique needs of the client’s business and patients. Here are two examples:

Quick-turn AC fixes for treatment rooms: One aspect of the client’s business is laser hair removal treatments. Those generate a lot of heat. If an AC unit goes down, a treatment room can quickly become unusable. When a facility registers rising temperatures, Lessen immediately dispatches temporary AC units to the treatment room, and follows up to diagnose the HVAC issue and make a repair/replace decision. That ensures client teams can continue to serve patients, while Lessen handles ongoing facility issues in the background.

Patient-first scheduling: In other commercial settings, it’s not uncommon to conduct maintenance work during business hours, with customers nearby. But patients expect medical spas to feel like a high-end healthcare experience, not a grocery store. To address this need, Lessen’s scheduling platform flexes around the client’s treatment and consultation room schedule, to ensure facilities stay open and looking good while minimizing interactions between patients and repair teams.

Conclusion

Medical aesthetics is a patient-focused, high-end healthcare experience. The appearance of a location is one of the first indications a prospective patient has about the quality of their care. By partnering closely to understand those business needs and leveraging the power of Lessen’s technology and vendor network, Lessen delivered dramatically better results for the business, employees, and most importantly, patients.