Amy Partilla, Hackensack Meridian Health: We all know the patient journey is not linear and clean. It can be bouncing all over the place and very unpredictable in many cases. So we started using the Harmony dashboard. I think it was late last year, probably, and we are just regularly looking at that and regularly looking at what patients are getting too many texts from us really. Currently, we have integrated into Harmony our I mentioned Epic optime. We have, of course, our appointment reminders. We have our care gap closure and the campaigns that we run in those areas.
We also recently just implemented something with our pharmacy team. It was a partnership with Dr. 1st and Artera, so that when patients get a prescription they will, they’ll get a text, basically, Dr. First, as real time benefits authorization, and we’ll send the patient information about where they pick up their prescription, any education about that prescription, etc. So those messages are also feeding into our Harmony, and we have many, many more items to come. But looking at those, you know, every maybe once a week or every couple of weeks we run a report and we say, Okay, who’s getting Who’s getting too high volume of texts and just really digging in and looking at what those are. Sometimes it says as simple as you know, working with another team like I mentioned with optime surgery patients and say, okay, we’re going to cut off this message…we no longer need to be sending that because it’s being taken care of through another system.
And sometimes it’s just our own messaging we have. This is a pretty simple thing, but we have merged messaging for instant book appointments because we see that many patients, you know, whether they’re going for their allergy shots, or they have a behavioral health or physical therapy, or whatever it may be, they may be booking appointments out, you know, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, etc., all at one time, and we’re hitting them with, you know, 6, 8, 12 messages, saying, “Thanks thanks for booking your appointment. Thanks for booking your appointment. And that’s absurd. So we we learned to really, you know, address that and cut that off. And it’s we’ve just found it really helpful to look for other trends like that. Sometimes high message volume is great and expected, because it may be they’re texting, you know, bidirectional with someone from our patient access center to schedule or reschedule an appointment. So it’s not always a bad thing, sometimes it’s intentional, but we definitely want to find out where those issues are and and get those addressed.
Zach Wood, Artera: Thank you. And anyone else in terms of best practices? What’s worked well in making a, you know, positive impact for the patient experience and staff experience?
David Wright, Disruptive Innovations: I would just add maybe some of the newer technologies that have become available that you know in some instances you can take advantage through enterprise platforms that you’re already, you know, leveraging, and then in other cases are being made available through, you know, partners like Artera, some of the newer cloud contact center vendors…But you know, things we can do with, you know, auto summarization, things we can do with, you know, screen pop and personalization, basically like, how am I making it so that my access representatives can focus on being there with the patient while they’re on the phone with the patient instead of thinking about the next thing they have to do. So, natural language processing over the course of the conversation, feeding next best action. You know all things that are now possible. So it’s exciting.
Zach Wood, Artera: Yeah, very exciting.
Amy Partilla, Hackensack Meridian Health: And I’ll add also the consistency of the message and making sure that everything is branded and, not just branded, but you’re speaking with a common voice, a consistent voice from the network.
We have I, you know, mentioned the uptime messages we’re sending through Epic or from Epic through Artera. We’re also currently working on adding more, including messages for our Cath Lab patients. So you know, updates to the family there, and also for our emergency department. So you know, when patients are in the emergency department, we can let them know, you know, ‘we’re prepping your room.’ So stay in the area. We say, ‘if you need to use a restroom, we’re going to need a sample. So just hold off until we get back to you if you can.’
So all of these messages, it used to be, you know, a person, a clinician, or someone going back and forth, running through all these rooms, communicating these simple messages to patients that really don’t. I mean, you know, many do need to be face to face, but not all messages need to be face to face. So we’re really making sure that our clinicians are, we’re using them and they’re doing what they should be doing and not just, you know, running around communicating with patients. So we’re building efficiency there, too.
Zach Wood, Artera: That’s excellent.
