St. Louis-based Ascension scaled a digital outreach campaign to 179,711 unique patients across 12 states, resulting in 73,253 preventive care appointments scheduled within 14 days of initial outreach.
The campaign prompts patients to schedule annual wellness visits and is featured in a new case study published in NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery.
Ascension began testing the campaign in September 2022 at a small number of primary care practices. Feedback from patients, clinicians and operational teams helped Ascension refine the campaign’s language, coordinate outreach with appointment availability and ensure contact centers could support increased scheduling demand before expanding the program.
From September 2022 through September 2024, the campaign was triggered 282,602 times and reached 179,711 unique patients across 12 states. It resulted in 73,253 needed preventive care appointments scheduled within 14 days of initial outreach, representing a 25.9% scheduling rate.
The rate was approximately five times that achieved through Ascension’s previous manual telephone outreach, according to a Sept. 10 news release.
“Annual wellness visits can better connect clinicians to each patient’s health needs and identify opportunities for preventive care,” Thomas Aloia, MD, executive vice president and chief clinical officer of Ascension, said in the release. “This work demonstrates how thoughtful use of behavioral science and digital technology can make it easier for patients to take that next step while supporting care teams with a more scalable approach to outreach.”
Insights from the campaign led Ascension to further refine its messaging, improve coordination across clinical and operational teams, and address broader opportunities involving electronic consent and self-scheduling.
Working with legal and compliance teams, Ascension also developed an electronic consent process allowing patients to opt in to digital communications through email or text. The process enabled the campaign to reach an additional 21,429 patients over 13 months.
“By pairing personalized outreach with the right operational support, we developed a patient-centric, compliant and scalable way to help more patients connect with important preventive care,” Mitesh Patel, MD, MBA, vice president and chief clinical transformation officer of Ascension, said in the release.
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