SSM Health is a health system headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, with 23 hospitals and more than 650 physician offices serving Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

THE CHALLENGE

For SSM Health, continuous improvement is a high priority. When it looked at online scheduling – and the metrics that drive it – staff was determined to do better. This would help the communities and patients the health system serves find the care they are searching for quicker and easier. Further, giving patients some of their time back always is a priority in healthcare.

“SSM Health realized the need to establish an enterprise-level online website scheduling experience strategy,” said Geoff Wester, director of digital patient engagement strategy at SSM Health. “Historically, SSM Health’s online website experience was educational and informational. We prioritized keeping up with evolving consumer expectations of ease and speed of booking care.

“While we had a strong presence digitally, our patient experience needed to improve to meet the needs of consumers, especially mobile users who account for about two-thirds of our traffic,” he continued. “We wanted to improve the digital patient engagement for our patients, making it easier to find care, care that consumers are searching for on Google. And there’s no way around it – patients start their care journey with a search, and Google prioritizes fast websites.”

About half of users abandon websites that take longer than three seconds to load, he added. As such, a sluggish experience doesn’t just create friction, it pushes a healthcare organization further out of reach for the very people looking for care.

“Online scheduling presented another hurdle,” Wester said. “Patients don’t always know what type of visit they need – whether urgent care, virtual or primary care – leading to either limited search results or abandoned booking attempts. We needed a smarter, more dynamic approach – one that met consumer expectations while also optimizing how patients were matched with care.”

PROPOSAL

SSM Health began working with vendor DexCare to create a digital patient engagement strategy. The primary goal was to bring e-commerce best practices to healthcare.

“While we still believe it is important to educate our patients, we realize they often have a clear objective – scheduling care – when they come to our site, so it was essential to make scheduling care a quick and easy process, giving time back to our patients,” Wester explained.

“We created clear call to actions for scheduling primary care, pediatrics, OB-GYN, urgent care locations and express virtual care services,” he continued. “This aligns with the expectations of consumers that the experience is fast and effective, especially on mobile. It also ensured that when patients search for care online, SSM Health would be easy to find, and our exceptional care would be easy to access.”

The health system also wanted to deliver choice and care options to consumers – access to nearby urgent care locations, express virtual care and care team members. By streamlining scheduling and guiding to available care options, the technology reduced friction and unnecessary steps for patients.

“This fits well with SSM Health’s growth goal of increasing primary care lives and aligning our open scheduling strategy with new patients who are searching for care online,” Wester said.

“Our search functionality within our main web site also required an enhancement,” he added. “Healthcare search tools have traditionally relied on rigid, exact matches, but patients don’t always look for a doctor’s name or a specialty – they describe symptoms, conditions or care needs. SSM Health’s goal was to make the experience more intuitive to ensure when patients performed a search on our website, they would find relevant, available and appropriate options.”

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

SSM Health implemented the technology to create a seamless, intuitive experience – from the initial search to booking an appointment. Whether patients start on Google or on the health system’s website, the technology delivers real-time availability, a full range of care options and the most relevant providers – automatically sorted by location, availability and relevancy.

The platform is integrated with two main source systems. The first is SSM Health’s provider and location master data management system, which is connected to many systems within SSM Health. The second is the Epic EHR, to ensure accurate availability for locations and providers is displayed and aligned with all other scheduling modalities.

RESULTS

The health system’s main goal with the new technology was new patient acquisition via its website.

“SSM Health has experienced a 19% increase with this metric; more than 77% of appointments are booked as ‘new patient’ since DexCare went live,” Wester reported. “We boosted organic traffic from Google, which means more patients found SSM Health, engaged with our content, and moved from consideration to scheduling.”

The metrics that led to this increase include:

• 85% improvement in mobile click-through rate in the last year (81% improvement in desktop click-through rate). With increased speed, visibility also increased, especially in mobile.
• Quadrupling the online booking completion rate.
• In 6-10% of these engagements, alternative or similar care options are selected and booked at the same success rate as above. By doing this, SSM Health is keeping patients engaged with care they may not have initially considered but is what they ultimately selected.

ADVICE FOR OTHERS

“The manner in which patients seek care is evolving,” Wester observed. “They expect speed, convenience and choice. A slow or frustrating digital experience leads them elsewhere. But when access is seamless, trust grows, engagement increases and more patients follow through with booking care.

“Collaboration with many stakeholders is key to success in this work,” he advised. “Several departments and teams across the organization are needed to make something like this come together. Expertise is needed from operations, marketing and communications, analytics, and technical teams that are all aligned in both strategy and goals.”

Follow Bill’s HIT coverage on LinkedIn: Bill Siwicki
Email him: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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