increase in Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (MAWVs) scheduled per month since August 2023
Revenue generated
“Loyal has gotten us up to speed, and the partnership has been a huge win for us. We are seeing numbers increase every month from an online scheduling perspective.”
– Mark Hebenstreit, VP, Physician Services Enterprise
ScionHealth provides innovative care solutions throughout the nation to patients and residents across health settings – from inpatient acute care to senior living – in local communities. Nationwide, ScionHealth has a comprehensive network of 94 hospital locations – 76 specialty hospitals and 18 community hospital campuses and associated health systems – and six senior living communities. These communities are served by a team of approximately 25,000 dedicated and compassionate healthcare professionals.
Recognizing the barriers to engaging patients in preventive care, ScionHealth needed a way to more easily interact with its patient population via email and SMS, pushing appointment reminders and scheduling prompts.
These days, patients are skipping out on important health screenings, with a 2023 survey finding that 1 in 4 U.S. adults are missing routine checkups. As society becomes more and more reliant on digital technologies and communications, it is more important than ever to meet patients where they are to fill gaps in care.
ScionHealth was seeking ways to increase the volume of Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (MAWVs) for eligible beneficiaries, an important step in closing care gaps for at-risk populations, and launch preventative campaigns for breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung cancer. Similarly, the team wanted to target populations most at-risk for being noncompliant with their care, including patients with diabetes and hypertension. Loyal’s integrated CRM tool was the perfect solution for ScionHealth to more effectively target patients for their MAWVs and preventative screenings and seamlessly set up an appointment online.
ScionHealth had been relying on its historic EHR platform for CRM capabilities, and while many EHR platforms tout their ability to engage patients, in reality, their sole purpose is to be a source of truth for a patient’s medical history. ScionHealth needed additional support for engaging patients and launching campaigns, a common issue for health systems leveraging an EHR for additional capabilities. Since ScionHealth was looking to close care gaps for patients with diabetes and hypertension while simultaneously increasing preventative screening appointments and MAWVs, finding a solution that could launch campaigns targeting specific populations was critical.
Setting up one campaign per market was a manual and time-consuming task in the EHR platform. With ScionHealth’s limited time and resources to create, activate, and scale these outbound communications, the organization required a partner that didn’t simply offer a one-size-fits-all approach. It needed a solution that could help automate tasks, customize to unique market needs, and prove that campaigns were driving appointments that converted to completed visits for these patients.
Adding further strain to staff who already manage multiple disparate vendors meant high operational overhead and costs for the health system. These challenges resulted in lower and less targeted patient engagement. Rather than rely on multiple, disparate systems, ScionHealth sought help for their patient engagement needs from a single platform that specializes in CRM and could seamlessly integrate with its EHR to maximize team resources, create staff efficiencies, and target patients effectively.
Given this landscape, ScionHealth was also hoping for a solution that would be “always on.” By implementing an evergreen campaign that is constantly running in the background, the organization would be able to reap the benefits of growth without any additional efforts.
Addressing these needs would enable the organization to improve overall patient health and outcomes by decreasing care gaps among at-risk populations. Additionally, a more effective platform would increase compliance in MAWVs, improve operational efficiency, and allow the organization to obtain actionable insights to inform decisions about growth and appointment utilization.
Increase the volume of Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (MAWVs) for eligible beneficiaries
Target populations most at-risk for being noncompliant with their care
ScionHealth turned to Loyal’s suite of products, including the CRM tool, an integrated communication automation engine that enables health systems to effectively engage and establish longitudinal relationships with patients. Loyal’s CRM tool helps ScionHealth uncover key insights by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) so its team can better understand patient behavior, experience and sentiment. It also helps create transparency by consolidating patient, hospital, and billing data from internal and external (EHR) sources.
As one of ScionHealth’s main priorities included increasing MAWVs for appropriate patients, Loyal’s pre-built audience segmentation templates allowed ScionHealth to target any patient due for this type of appointment. By showing the right message to the right patient at the right time, it helps ScionHealth boost lead management.
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
ScionHealth piloted the MAWV campaign program in the Livingston, TN community and provided Loyal’s CRM platform with email and SMS content targeted toward the MAWV-eligible patient population. Since August 2023, 23,784 patients, who were eligible for a MAWV, but had not yet scheduled, were contacted across the Livingston market. This resulted in 2,853 appointments scheduled and 2,626 encounters, and more than $656,000 in revenue generated. Additionally, within two weeks after this patient population attended a MAWV, an additional 938 appointments were scheduled, adding $234,500 of additional revenue.
Loyal was able to support ScionHealth’s expansion as it scaled its campaigns, helping the organization meet tight deadlines and business goals. In that way, Loyal’s partnership acted as a true extension of ScionHealth’s team. Instead of having internal staff turn to its EHR platform to pull reports and manually reach out to specific patient populations, Loyal absorbed more of the administrative lift, getting patients in the door and providing data around completed appointments.
“One of the most impactful things with Loyal is the ability to look at the uniqueness of each market and adjust campaigns appropriately. We are able to build campaigns at the enterprise level, but then customize specifically to each individual market need.”
– Sarah Hughes, VP, Strategic Operations
The always-on campaign means the health system is now constantly adding growth in the background by reactivating and engaging with eligible MAWV patients. The campaign generated more confirmed visits than ScionHealth had been able to report on previously. Coming off the success of the pilot, ScionHealth saw the value in replicating the success in other markets.
Patients contacted
Appointments scheduled
Patients encountered
Given the success that ScionHealth experienced in closing the gaps in MAWV appointments, it is now interested in launching campaigns that close additional gaps, including well-child visits, mammograms, Cervical Cancer Screening, and Colorectal Cancer Screening. The most effective method of care management is prevention, and Loyal sees an opportunity for ScionHealth to champion that approach.
Together with Loyal, ScionHealth is now able to launch additional campaigns and gather market-specific insights across the enterprise. When creating and scaling the campaigns, ScionHealth will have the ability to build at the enterprise level, but customize to the market level, both in the design of the campaign, but also in the schedule of campaigns that are launched. In this way, campaigns can be run in two different states, and adjusted to the nuances of the population, ultimately allowing ScionHealth to connect with as many patients in possible and get them the preventative care they need.
Loyal is the leading end-to-end digital healthcare platform that unifies care touchpoints for patients and providers alike.