Ten Patients Is Not a Staffing Plan: Cleveland Startup Proposes Workload-Based Staffing Test
Ohio Pen/10344575

CLEVELAND - OhioPen -- Correction, November 10, 2026: This release has been corrected. It described Phase Zero as a fixed-fee diagnostic; authorized commercial terms have not been established and that description is withdrawn. It said Kestrel Ridge Health retrains the forecast on a practice's history; practice-specific fitting would be work done with the practice, not an existing automated feature. The 208.61-minute figure is a naive, uncalibrated fixed-ratio comparison on synthetic data and is not evidence of superiority over a calibrated practice-specific approach. The three-to-four patients per hour technician benchmark is not a Kestrel Ridge Health finding. It is reported in Elizabeth Monroe's January 2024 Ophthalmology Management article, which cites a 2015 follow-up survey of 79 practices and 6,319 patient workups, and it excludes certain diagnostic tests. We have not independently verified the original survey.

A 2015 follow-up survey of 79 practices and 6,319 patient workups, as reported in Elizabeth Monroe's January 2024 Ophthalmology Management article (https://ophthalmologymanagement.com/issues/2024/januaryfebruary/best-practices/), found that a proficient technician ideally handles three to four patients an hour, excluding certain diagnostic tests. This is a reported benchmark, not a staffing requirement.

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Kestrel Ridge Health LLC is building software that forecasts technician minutes per session and drafts a staffing plan from the practice's own roster. Plans require human approval by default.

The company has tested this only on synthetic sessions it generated itself, so the results are not evidence about any real clinic. On 2,318 synthetic sessions, the model's average error was 23.76 minutes per session, compared with a naive, uncalibrated fixed staffing ratio at 208.61 minutes, which is not a fair test of a calibrated practice-specific approach.

The practice supplies approved operational counts. Kestrel Ridge Health would fit the forecast to those records with the practice, not through an automated product feature. It would be compared with both the practice's existing staffing method and a historical average. Phase Zero stops unless it beats both by a pre-agreed margin and achieves near-80% forecast-range coverage. Commercial terms have not been established.

"Ten post-op checks and ten new patients are both ten patients. They are not the same morning for your techs," said Thomas Wagenberg, co-founder of Kestrel Ridge Health. "We test it on the practice's own numbers first. If we don't beat what the practice does today, we stop, and the finding is theirs."

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The software has not been validated on real clinic data, is not HIPAA certified, and is not connected to any EHR or scheduling system. The company has no customers yet.

About Kestrel Ridge Health: Builds technician staffing software for ophthalmology practices, starting with Phase Zero. Results: https://kestrelridgehealth.com/evidence/.