How a newly-formed heath system serving 1.4M+ patients transformed digital care access with a comprehensive provider directory comprising of 1,600+ providers.
THE CHALLENGE
Gaining Visibility Into a Newly-Formed Health System
After officially rebranding post-merger, the organization’s leadership team set out to establish the new brand and differentiate their health system by creating a consistent, modern consumer experience across the system. One of the first initiatives the team took on was a consumerism project to revamp their provider directory tools and empower consumers to find the right care quickly and conveniently.
However, before they could do so, they needed to understand who was in each department, where they practiced, and what conditions they treated, and where this various information lived across the two organizations. This exercise, which would serve as both the catalyst and foundation for their digital transformation, focused on addressing three key challenges:
No Centralized Source for Provider Information
With operations siloed across two formerly separate health systems and provider data housed in multiple source systems (e.g., EHRs, credentialing tools, marketing and HR databases), maintaining high quality, up-to-date data to facilitate a consistent patient access experience became a growing challenge.
Lack of Visibility Into Provider Expertise Across the System
In addition to lacking a system- wide provider directory, the health system had limited insight into providers’ specific areas of clinical focus, as well as their respective appointment availability, hindering its ability to match patients with the right providers effectively across the system.
Limited Digital Self-Service Tools for Consumers
As the health system looked to simplify access post-merger and distinguish their new brand to consumers across the state, they saw that providing an easier way to search for care online would be essential, as their existing solutions fell short in enabling a user-friendly search experience and self-scheduling.
THE SOLUTION
A Modern Digital Access Experience Powered by Comprehensive Provider Data
The health system’s new leadership team launched their consumer engagement initiative soon after the merger was complete and selected Kyruus Health as a key partner to both build their new provider directory and enhance online access. Their first step was to form a clinical governance committee, comprised of physician leaders from across service lines, and assemble IT stakeholders to analyze the various systems and clean the data. This process forced the group to examine their disparate data sources, evaluate which workflows limited, or expanded patient access, and make decisions about how to standardize scheduling rules to build a directory that would support their goal of enhancing patient access.
From there, the health system used the Kyruus Connect for Providers data management platform to consolidate their various data sources and reconcile them to create a single profile for each provider.
“Solving the issue of fragmented provider data not only benefits consumers and providers, but also our internal teams who previously spent hours every month on manual updates. Partnering with Kyruus Health to build our single source of truth has enabled us to reduce resources tied to these updates and offers us the ability to manage and activate data at scale across our organization.” – Chief Digital Officer
Using the platform’s online administrative solution, they were able to apply clinical terms from Kyruus Health’ clinical taxonomy to groups of their providers using pre-built specialty templates, enabling them to configure profiles quickly and efficiently. The health system team also used the solution to give providers a tool to edit consumer-centric sections of their profiles (e.g., bios, age groups seen) and refine their clinical areas of focus.
The robust new provider directory and rich profiles within it formed the foundation for the health system’s launch of Search on their websites. This solution enabled the organization to modernize their consumer search experience by not only providing consumers detailed visibility into their provider groups, but also allowing them to hone in on providers who would match their particular clinical and non-clinical needs. As the team continues working to sunset their legacy health system websites they have implemented different instances of Search on their various sites, all powered by the same underlying provider data to deliver a consistent online access experience to their patient communities.
To give consumers more self-service options, the organization subsequently went live with Schedule, which enables health systems to surface appointment availability and enable direct online scheduling through an integration between the Kyruus platform and their underlying EHR. Close to a year later, the health system has more than 300 providers on Schedule, including PCPs, OB/GYNs, and pediatricians, with plans to expand to for a wider set of providers in the near future.
THE IMPACT
Consolidated Provider Data. Greater Network Visibility. Enhanced Digital Access
A Single Source of Provider Data to Power Patient Access
For the newly formed heath system, making sure new and existing patients could find accurate and comprehensive information about their providers was extremely important. With 70% of consumers turning to the internet when searching for a new provider, the health system focused their initial efforts on building their system- wide provider directory to form the foundation of their new digital experience. Combining 10 data sources, including two different EHRs, the health system used Kyruus Connect to create what they called the “Golden Record” for provider data. Doing so has not only broken down data silos, but also streamlined both ongoing data maintenance and provider onboarding.
Rich Provider Profiles to Provide Visibility Across an Expanding Health System
Before Kyruus Connect, the health system lacked a detailed understanding of the composition of their newly formed medical group and clinically integrated network. Kyruus Connect now serves as the organization’s primary source of provider information, providing a detailed view of more than 4,000 providers, including where they practice, their clinical areas of focus, appointment availability, and more. It also includes non-clinical entities, like virtual care offerings. By building this comprehensive directory, the health system has boosted traffic to their website substantially, from Q4 year 1 (first full quarter live) to Q4 year 2, website traffic increased by almost 50%.
LOOKING AHEAD
Building Upon Early Online Scheduling Success to Continue Expanding Digital Access
As the health system looks to continue to differentiate their brand by delivering an easier and more convenient access experience, the team plans to expand their online scheduling capabilities. Now that they have migrated all of their providers onto Epic, they are going to add more providers and departments to Schedule, to increase the types of appointments consumers can book online. As they do so, the novel analytics available in the platform will enable them to track their success and identify areas of opportunity as they work to further streamline and modernize access for patients.