Patient engagement tech reaps $1 million annually for health system
Community Memorial Health System sees a 29% reduction in no-shows and an automatic way to fill cancellations, which all leads to more revenue.
Community Memorial Health System, based in Ventura, California, had a legacy appointment reminder system that only delivered messages in English, which was a problem for many of its Spanish-speaking patients.
Also, the system provided patients limited responses by pressing 1 or 2. As a result, many patients either did not respond or simply cancelled.
So staff carved out time each day to manually call patients to remind them of their appointments, and to reschedule cancellations for necessary follow-up visits. Sometimes they got through and sometimes they left a message. It was time- and resource-heavy, and the no-show rate was quite high.
“Then, in December 2017, the largest wildfire in California history to date swept through our community,” recalled Lori Hooks, director of quality and practice systems, ambulatory medicine, at Community Memorial Health System. “Some of our sites had to close without notice. Providers could not work, or quickly moved to other locations temporarily.”
The health system had to reach out by telephone to every patient on the schedule with no advance notice. But then, even the call center had to move to another location to escape the smoke and power outages. That meant the core phone team could not make or answer calls until the organization scrambled to physically set up an alternate phone system. The organization got it done, but it was challenging. Staff knew they needed a faster, more nimble plan.
“Community Memorial Health System clearly needed a communication platform with the flexibility to handle each location’s unique needs while addressing the high no-show rate and with the ability to reach patients quickly in the event of an emergency,” Hooks said.
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