Community Health Network finds big ROI in consumer-focused technology

Since its founding more than 60 years ago, Community Health Network, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit health system, has worked to stay true to its tagline: “Exceptional care. Simply delivered.”

A team of approximately 16,000 health professionals shares in that mission by offering the full breadth of health services with a special focus on population health management. Spanning more than 200 care sites across the state, the organization integrates hundreds of physicians, specialty and acute care hospitals, surgery centers, home care services, behavioral health and employer health services.

Problem

The rapid shift to consumer-centric care driven by the pandemic and the advent of Big Tech has created a competitive landscape in healthcare. Patients are becoming buyers with greater choice in the marketplace, creating a new sense of urgency to improve how they discover and access care.

“Access to patient care is expected to be easy, personalized and seamless, and we recognized that our digital front door could better meet consumer expectations,” said Dr. Patrick McGill, Executive Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer, Community Health Network. Had to do.” “In addition, analysis of internal data showed a tremendous opportunity to meet consumers where they begin their search for care and customize our experience to expand the markets and patients we serve.

“We found that nearly 75% of consumers searching for on-demand primary care at one of our locations began their search on Google, while only 17% began their search through our website, where appointment search and scheduling were the most common. Were digitally enabled,” he continued.

To engage, reach, and attract patients, community health needed to make access to care more searchable, discoverable, and accessible to online consumers. Because consumers prioritize convenience and ease of use, any points of friction had to be removed to eliminate leakage and site abandonment in order to strengthen acquisition.

“We also saw an opportunity to further enhance the virtual care experience to better serve patients,” McGill said. “Therefore, we began building a digital ecosystem to improve discovery, discovery and access to care by customers.

“It will be critical infrastructure – platforms that are easily integrated, intuitive and flexible – that will solve fundamental challenges such as orchestrating supply and demand to deliver customer-first experiences.”

Dr. Patrick McGill, Community Health Network

“We needed a solution for online merchandising of services, enhancing the front-end experience, improving access and discoverability of our care services while optimizing system capacity,” he added. “It’s this front- and back-end combination that brought us to Vender Dexcare.”

Proposal

Sellers’ team shares Community Health’s understanding that access to care begins with a multidisciplinary approach, and that moving the needle in a meaningful way requires both increasing supply and demand. Upon assessing the vendor’s platform and community health opportunity areas, it quickly became clear to McGill that this vendor offered the right technology.

“The DexCare platform optimizes discovery and access to care for patients while balancing system capacity,” McGill explained. “The company offers a range of solutions that combine digital discovery, intelligent navigation and care merchandising capabilities – All the components we were looking for in our digital transformation journey.

“The ability to take care of business digitally across services and modalities captured our interest,” he continued. “And this new capability enables us to provide care intelligently to route patients to the best fit options.”

He said the seller’s approach echoes retail best practices to provide a “shoppable” experience that is easy to navigate and provides the lowest-cost, highest-value care one wants.

“The front-end experience is faster on mobile devices, promoted by Google to drive organic traffic, and reduces friction to make care easier,” he added. “When combined with capacity optimization, we knew Dexcare would be the vehicle to bring more patients into Community Health and enable us to deliver exceptional, seamless care patients.”

meet the challenge

Community Health Network implemented technology to drive new patient acquisition, increase utilization of services, and provide the highest quality care in the most efficient manner. It first deployed this technology in an area where consumer expectations are highest for a digital-first experience: On-demand care in virtual, retail, urgent and primary care settings.

“On the front end, Dexcare optimized the ability for consumers to find and book care at a community health location,” McGill said. “On our website, technology powers our urgent care directory and care search experience. When a consumer selects a specific location, Dexcare’s Care Tiles technology eliminates the steps of booking care and provides consumers with an instant access to that location.” access real-time scheduling to find the care they are looking for.

“Additionally, our urgent care pages use faster page technology to increase reach and visibility in Google searches for care,” he continued. “Technology serves as the link between a Google search and booking available care – Like Healthcare’s OpenTable, but equipped with data intelligence and matching capabilities.

These capabilities enable the provider organization to engage consumers anywhere along their care journey and provide a new level of access to the health system, he added. More patients in community health than they might have overlooked are now finding it through Google, and scheduling care conveniently on the website, for higher takeover.

“On the back end, the technology load-balances system capability,” McGill explained. “This frees up time for providers and care teams, and surfaces additional availability while giving consumers more choice, choice and flexibility,” McGill said. “DexCare works in tandem with the legacy systems we have. The platform integrates fully with our EHR to achieve consistency and interoperability for optimized efficiency, collaboration, visibility and ROI.

Result

Community Health Network now provides a searchable and integrated digital experience that eliminates friction to increase patient acquisition.

“With DexCare, we are automatically allocating and optimizing resource usage to meet consumer demand and business goals,” McGill explained. “The expansion of our online presence and virtual care offerings has also increased access for patients in need of care in the surrounding Indianapolis communities.

“As part of this initiative, we have measured significant growth,” he continued. “Since implementing the technology in April 2021, we have saved 377 physician visit hours annually due to our increased efficiency and use of virtual care services.”

In addition, the health system has achieved a 300% increase in virtual care capacity thanks to the technology’s data intelligence and automatic optimization of resource utilization, patient balancing and capacity management.

“And on the patient acquisition front, we have seen a 12% increase in net-new patients acquired into the health system, and 30% of our patients are now returning for a retail or video visit within six months of their initial visit. ,” ” They said.

advice for others

“Health systems have no choice but to change the way they seek and access care,” McGill said. “Consider what is at stake: Demand for care grows while physicians and nurses remain in short supply. System capacity is available but unreachable due to mismatches in how resources are deployed. And Big Tech The emergence of the U.S. is set to disrupt the way consumers find and seek care.

“Individual point solutions are expensive, cumbersome and fundamentally inefficient at solving the system’s access, capacity and patient acquisition challenges,” he advises. “It will be critical infrastructure – Platforms that are easily integrated, intuitive and flexible – that will solve fundamental challenges like orchestrating supply and demand to deliver customer-first experiences.

Access to care is mission-critical, and the solution is digital, he said. Although the problems of access to healthcare are complex, they do not necessarily have to be solutions, they concluded.

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