The 23-hospital system adopted DexCare, a patient access spinoff from Renton, Wash.-based Providence, that has helped ramp up patient acquisition, self-scheduling and virtual visits.
“Consumer expectations have changed for healthcare. The hospitality industry, banking and travel are light years in front of us,” said Geoff Wester, director of digital patient engagement strategy at SSM Health. “So how do we get there as an organization?”
Industrywide, patients often try to schedule appointments online but run into access and technology issues. With the new website platform, SSM Health increased online booking completion from about 20% to as much as 80%.
To get there, websites had to load faster, appointments had to be available, Mr. Wester said. The filtering and sorting options, and natural language processing, mimic e-commerce sites. The online tool also shows patients different care options they might not have originally searched for: nearby urgent care, telehealth.
Virtual visits also rose by 20%, with roughly 50,000 new virtual appointments in the past year. Mr. Wester called SSM Health’s platform a “more shoppable kind of experience that delivers care options quickly.”
“We have to work with several other departments across the organization to make something like this come together,” he said. “Operations is a huge portion of that, and also our analytics department and our technical teams, as well as marketing and communications. Collaboration is key.”
The health system plans to continue beefing up online scheduling and offer on-demand virtual visits.