Townsville Hospital and Health Service streamlines critical dental care with Docusign

Townsville Hospital and Health Service (HHS) Oral Health delivers essential school dental care across North Queensland, servicing communities from Townsville to Ingham, Ayr, and Charters Towers, as well as Palm and Magnetic Islands. 

To reach children where they are, the team operates mobile dental vans across the region and provides support to children from varied socio-economic backgrounds. The mission of Oral Health service is to promote, maintain, and improve the health and well-being of the community’s oral health. Providing care also means managing patient paperwork, including consent forms, which proved a significant hurdle for the mobile dental team. 

Paper delays kept dental care at bay

Before Docusign, obtaining parental consent was slow and cumbersome. A six‑page, paper‑based form went home in school bags and trickled back over months. For children with significant tooth decay, that delay mattered.

“A healthy smile impacts your confidence and how you show up in the world. That’s why it’s so important to have early intervention for better long-term outcomes for these children. The sooner we can get consent, the sooner we can start treatment,” said Dr Joel Abraham, Clinical Director Oral Health Services at Townsville HHS.

The legacy form was long and hard to navigate. Families often returned incomplete paperwork, creating more back‑and‑forth. Staff juggled scanned PDFs, inboxes and spreadsheets, with limited visibility of status. Separate signatures were also needed for Medicare’s Child Dental Benefits Scheme, adding friction for parents and administrators.

In order to deliver on its core mission, alleviate bottlenecks, and improve efficiency, Townsville HHS implemented Docusign as a digital solution for gathering patient consent. An important part of the evaluation process was Docusign’s ability to meet strict governance and privacy requirements and work within existing staff tools.

A flexible digital transformation

Dr Abraham and his team took a practical path: simplify the form and create a digital signing path via Docusign. The familiar paper forms were updated to include a QR code, which took parents to a Docusign Web Form that allowed them to complete signing from anywhere, on any device.

“Adoption was much faster than we expected. It took about 3-4 weeks to reach consent form parity with the old paper-based process. Schools, staff, clinicians, and parents have embraced the change,” Dr Abraham  says.

Through the ease of Docusign eSignature, parents need only sign once to approve treatment and Medicare bulk‑billing. Details captured in the Web Form are then reused to pre‑fill the Medicare consent, cutting errors and effort.

Using the integration with Microsoft Power Automate, all staff were able to access real‑time tracking and an audit trail inside Microsoft 365. “This meant  admin staff were able to work in familiar tools without even touching the Docusign portal,” said Dr Abraham.

The approach also met privacy and security needs, with Docusign implemented in line with Queensland Health requirements.

“As a public health service, our bar for security is high,” said Dr Abraham. “The great thing about Docusign is they provide data residency in Australia, which was important to us. We’re also able to capture a full audit trail, store submissions securely with version control, and manage access with Single Sign-On (SSO). That combination keeps clinicians efficient and patient data protected.”

Faster access to critical care

Reflecting on the uplift across operations, Dr Abraham said “Docusign cut the turnaround from days to minutes, which directly improves health outcomes.”

What once took around 10 days is now routinely completed the same day and often within minutes, representing a 90% faster turnaround on average.

“The easy mobile experience and the option to keep using paper has contributed to higher consent form completion rates. The difference is night and day,” Dr Abraham explained. 

Schools with higher digital adoption moved quickly, while others steadily followed with the paper‑plus‑QR model. Overall, this mixed modality saw consent rates increase by more than 10%.

“At most schools, 75% of consents returned via Docusign – I think this is the biggest win, as we didn't anticipate such a good uptake,” Dr Abraham added.

Power Automate and Microsoft Lists also replace manual filing and spreadsheet wrangling, resulting in less admin and more visibility. Staff can see who updated what and when, improving accountability, record keeping, and planning. This reduced processing times from 6-7 minutes down to 4 minutes per consent. And it all adds up: Townsville HHS now saves up to 225 hours of manual administrative time annually.

Smoother Medicare billing via one signing process also covers the Child Dental Benefits Scheme, reducing follow‑ups and improving cash flow for the service.

Finally, fewer print runs has lowered costs whilst meaningfully supporting sustainability goals. A win-win for the bottom line and the environment.

Same great treatment, better processes

Townsville HHS’s transition to Docusign is an example of how one simple change can have a significant impact on organisational effectiveness and improve the experience of critical partners, like schools, parents, and clinicians.

Dr Abraham  and the team turned a bottleneck into a faster, clearer process, so that Townsville HHS Oral Health staff can focus on what matters most: helping kids smile with confidence.