What You Should Know:
– Baptist Health deploys first-of-its-kind conversational digital assistant powered by LifeLink for patients who are discharged from the Emergency Department (ED) with referrals.
– Since launch, the conversational chatbot solution, which engages patients with mobile messaging to recommend follow-up care, the number of PCP appointment requests have increased by 15%. The technology is integrated into Cerner and Salesforce, personalizing the patient experience by working with Patient Access and care navigation teams.
– In addition, the LifeLink technology supports patient engagement workflows related to COVID-19 screening, care routing and appointment requests.
Baptist Health, a Jacksonville, Florida-based Baptist Health System is a network of five nationally accredited hospitals has successfully deployed LifeLInk’s digital assistant solutions to reach patients on their mobile devices to help them navigate their care across the system.
Why It Matters
Each year, more than 320,000 patients visit one of the 10 emergency departments in the Florida-based Baptist Health System network and around 60% of those patients are discharged with instructions to follow up with a Primary Care Physician (PCP). Yet, only 50% of patients with referral instructions follow through with their care instructions and schedule appointments – which can cost the hospital more money and endanger patient health. The deployments marks Baptist as the first provider system to successfully implement a conversational digital assistant for patients that are discharged from the Emergency Department (ED) with referrals.
The technology supports two key patient engagement workflows.
1. Emergency department to Primary Care Physician (PCP) referrals
2. COVID-19 screening, care routing, and appointment requests
Chabots Automate Patient Referrals and Care Navigation
The LifeLink chatbots engage every patient when they are discharged from the ED. The bots reach patients with mobile messaging to recommend PCP follow up care and help navigate into scheduled appointments within the Baptist Health network. Since launch, the solution has increased the number of PCP appointment requests by 15%.
A second major patient engagement challenge emerged as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. In March, Baptist partnered with LifeLink to launch an automated screener that aligned with county and state care guidelines, providing the Baptist COVID-19 response team with much needed conversational scale. The screener solution was implemented in less than two weeks.
As the symptoms and risk designations of COVID-19 became more known, Baptist pivoted rapidly to deepen the screener by adding capabilities to help patients request appointments 24×7, without need for any human intervention. This “digital front door” technology improves appointment request rates for patients across demographic segments through its simple and intuitive interface.
Cerner & Salesforce Integration
LifeLink is integrated to two key Baptist systems – Cerner and Salesforce. The read-write capabilities between the digital assistants and the EMR and CRM systems personalize the patient experience and ensure that the bots are working in concert with Patient Access and care navigation teams.
“The Baptist team is innovating to deliver the kinds of experiences that patients expect from their healthcare providers,” noted Greg Johnsen, CEO of LifeLink. “Now more than ever, the healthcare industry needs to evolve with smart, interactive technology and leaders like Baptist are showing everyone how to do it.”
