The “Digital Front Door” at Piedmont Healthcare Goes Beyond the Actual Door

Healthcare organizations have been improving their Digital Front Doors. The goal, for most, is to make it as easy as possible for patients to find and book appointments through online channels like websites and apps. Piedmont Healthcare, however, didn’t stop there. They have rolled in wayfinding, call centers, and in-person electronic registration as well. Why? Because they are driven to meet patients where they are.

Buoyed by Consumerism

There has been a growing number of healthcare organizations that have been investing to improve the way patients find and get care. This investment has been buoyed by the consumerism trend that began sweeping across healthcare in the mid 2010s. At that time, there were many studies that showed the preference patients had for organizations that offered consumer-like conveniences such as online appointment booking, and communication via texting.

One such study was conducted by Healthgrades in 2016 and showed that “almost one-third of consumers see physicians that offer online appointment scheduling as more appealing, and note that this offering would increase their likelihood of making an appointment”.

It was around that same time (2015) that Piedmont Healthcare, a not-for-profit, community health system caring for over 3.4 million patients across Georgia, began their digital front door journey. Healthcare IT Today recently sat down with Katie Logan, Chief Consumer and Strategy Officer and Jen Melby, Executive Director of Consumer Experience & Digital Innovation at Piedmont Healthcare to learn more about their work in this area.

What is the Digital Front Door?

There is no single definition of what “digital front door” means in healthcare. Each organization defines it differently. Piedmont has an expansive definition.

“I would say simplistically, we think of our digital front door as our website, our PiedmontNow mobile app, and our patient portal,” said Melby. “But more strategically, it’s how we make it easier for patients to access the system and find the information that they need in order to navigate their healthcare journey.”

“We’re really trying to meet people where they are,” added Logan. “I think from a consumer perspective, it’s all about how do I get in and get the right care, right time, right place. That looks and feels different for each individual. So we’re really focused on getting the right tools to meet them where they are.”

To meet patients where they are, Piedmont realized they had to go beyond getting patients to book an appointment. It wasn’t good enough to just get a patient physically to the front door of their system, their patients needed more. So they kept going and implemented wayfinding and other technologies to make the entire patient journey more hassle free.

Beyond the Front Door

“What we identified was that we really wanted to create a more unified hassle-free experience for patients,” explained Logan. “And so what are the tools and techniques and programs that would allow us to deliver on that? We really focused on: what’s the journey. Be that in-person, digitally, or literally navigating the hallways at a hospital.”

This thinking led the team of Piedmont to Gozio Health, which at the time, offered a leading digital wayfinding platform that helps patients with turn-by-turn navigation within the walls of healthcare facilities. Gozio has since added patient communication and online scheduling capabilities.

“We really sought out a partner and a solution that would help us and would continue to evolve their capabilities over time,” said Logan.

The wayfinding implementation was well received by patients and staff. The Piedmont team even found a way to inject a little fun into their roll out.

“When we first rolled out the wayfinding in the mobile app, we had contests and games that the staff could participate in,” shared Melby. “We had the CEOs of our facilities take pictures of themselves in a certain area of the hospital. We hid it in the wayfinding mobile app and then just challenged all of our staff members to download the app and go find them. We wanted them to use it themselves, because the next time a patient comes up and says ‘I have no idea where I need to go can you help me?’ they will be better champions for the tools that we have.”

Evolved based on feedback

The team Piedmont did not start their journey with a laundry-list of technologies that they wanted to implement. Nor did they have a checklist of processes that they wanted to digitize. Instead, they started with a clear mission to provide a hassle-free experience for their patients from the time they decide to seek care, until the time they are back home.

“We went through an exercise to lay out a strategy,” explained Logan. “What are the programs and tactics that are going to get us there? We established a set of principles that helped guide us in that direction. Out of that came early on programs like online scheduling, mobile app, wayfinding and a focus on personalization with CRM.”

Guided by this strategy, Piedmont continues to refine and expand its digital front door initiative.

Watch the full interview with Katie Logan and Jen Melby to learn:

  • How improving their digital front door also meant improving their analog operations like call centers.
  • What they would do differently if they could go back to 2015 and start over
  • Why they don’t use the term “digital front door” with patients

Learn more about Piedmont Healthcare: https://www.piedmont.org/

Learn more about Gozio Health: https://www.goziohealth.com/

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

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Transcript

[00:00:07] Colin Hung: Hi, I’m Colin Hung with Healthcare IT Today, and I’m sitting down today with Katie Logan, Chief Consumer and Strategy Officer at Piedmont Healthcare and Jen Melby, Executive Director of Consumer Experience and Digital Innovation, also at Piedmont Healthcare. Welcome to the program.

[00:00:30] Katie Logan: Good to be here in person.

[00:00:34] Colin Hung: So today we’re going to be talking about the digital front door – what it means, why it’s important and the benefits, to patients and staff when it’s implemented right…and I hear you’ve implemented it right.

[00:00:45] Jen Melby: We’d like to think so, yes.

[00:00:48] Colin Hung: So maybe we can start by level setting something. The term digital front door means a lot of different things to different people. What does it mean to you and what does it mean to Piedmont?

[00:00:59] Katie Logan: You want to take that?

[00:01:00] Jen Melby: I would say simplistically, we think of our digital front door as our website and our PiedmontNow app, our mobile app, and our patient portal.

[00:01:10] But more strategically, it’s how we make it easier for patients to access the system, find the information that they need in order to navigate their healthcare journey.

[00:01:19] Colin Hung: Interesting. And is that, is that how you think patients also see digital front door? Do they kind of go: “oh yeah, this is how I access my care. This is where I go to connect with people”

[00:01:30] Jen Melby: We’ve done a lot of work to really try to engage and communicate that to our patient base. I mean, I don’t think the term digital front door means anything to patients. And so that’s not really how we talk about it, but we really talk about ease of access and how do you get in and see us and how you don’t have to wait on the phone for minutes on end in order to get a hold of somebody and how we’re putting more power in their fingertips.

[00:01:56] I think that’s resonating a lot with our patients.

[00:01:59] Katie Logan: Yeah, we’re really trying to, to meet people where they are. So I think from a consumer perspective, it’s all about how do I get in and get the right care, right time, right place. That looks and feels different for each individual. So we’re really focused when we think about digital front door on what are the right tools to meet the, where they are.

[00:02:18] And like Jen said, it could be a phone call, but we’re also thinking about the tools and technologies behind the scenes for even a phone experience to really deliver personalized, high touch experiences along the way.

[00:02:31] Colin Hung: I like how you put that because when you think digital front door, a lot of people immediately go to: “oh, is online and online only.” You just mentioned call centers and saying that is still part of how people want to access care.

[00:02:44] Katie Logan: It is. And it’s important for us. All of the technology and why we’re here at HIMSS, right – all these great solutions – not to lose sight of that. I think because access is something that’s important to every individual and we all consume and go about our journey in different ways. So it could be, a phone center, a bit of an analog front door, but it’s really powered and backed by digital as well.

[00:03:08] Colin Hung: So let’s focus on the digital part of it. I’ve heard you have implemented a single platform from Gozio Health. It now can do appointment booking and provider directories, and even turn by turn wayfinding, once you’re inside your facility. That’s all done in this one place. Was that an important criteria for you when you were looking at this? Having everything in one integrated mobile app?

[00:03:33] Katie Logan: We should say yes. It’s really easy right now to look back and say, absolutely, we had all that perfectly mapped and planned. I think when we approach this work, which was a little early compared to most health systems. It was around the 2015 timeframe when we were really talking about consumerism. “Digital front door” wasn’t even a word then or a phrase then.

[00:03:56] But what we identified was that we really wanted to create a more unified hassle-free experience for patients. And so what are the tools and techniques and programs that would allow us to deliver on that? And mobile was a huge component. We really focused on: what’s the wayfinding journey, be that in-person, digitally, or literally navigating the hallways at a hospital.

[00:04:20] So we really sought out a partner and a solution that would help us think through that and continue to evolve the capabilities over time. But there were some pretty core tenants right out of the gate – wayfinding, scheduling – those types of interfaces that we focused on securing.

[00:04:39] Colin Hung: It sounded like at the beginning, you didn’t realize the extent of where you ended up now. Where was the start for you? Was there one particular aspect? Was it the wayfinding? Was it the appointment booking that kind of drove it?

[00:04:52] Katie Logan: Yeah. When we started thinking about this work, like I mentioned in 2015, consumerism was the big word and the organization made a pretty deep and heavy commitment to our vision to really transform healthcare, transformational access, and hassle-free experience.

[00:05:12] We went through an exercise to lay out a strategy – what are the programs and tactics that are going to get us there and a set of principles that helped guide that direction. So really connecting the journey, enriching technology with technology, and really anticipating the needs of our patients. Out of that came early on programs like online scheduling, mobile app and wayfinding and a focus on personalization with CRM.

[00:05:38] Colin Hung: I’m a fan of the wayfinding. The reason why I say that is because when we think about the experience that people have before they get to our facilities, it’s great. But then when they get there, they’re lost – especially on large campuses.

[00:05:51] So having that wayfinding can be such a help and makes for a smooth transition from all the great online stuff you were doing to the real world. Now getting them to the right place at the right time.

[00:06:01] Katie Logan: I was going to say, I think it’s such a good point because mapping that journey, that we’re all on, entering from different places. Our goal is really to have that consistent experience through the front door as well.

[00:06:15] Colin Hung: So let’s talk about that journey. You mentioned that word a few times. I love that word because it is a journey for a patient to come and seek care, to get care, and then of course, all the post visit stuff. How important was it to you and your community to have that digital companion, if you will, the digital capability to kind of go along the way, rather than just adjunct or haphazard connections?

[00:06:44] Jen Melby: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things that we’ve learned along the way is that in this journey and the experience we’ve found a lot of digital tools and solutions that we have enabled.

[00:06:57] However, we really understood that we needed to connect all of those together because it might not be as intuitive for a patient to understand when do they need to go to this digital solution and when do they need to use that, or if they’re calling and they don’t really perceive it as a digital interaction, how do we make sure that they’re connected into that digital experience when they arrive on one of our physical campuses?

[00:07:21] So connecting the dots and kind of creating like a wrap around experience that really focuses on how do we communicate these things to our patients? How do we make that call to action for them really simple. So they don’t really have to think about it. It’s just a natural part of how they receive care from Piedmont and what are their next steps need to be?

[00:07:43] Colin Hung: It must be very nice for them as well, to be able to just go to, like you said, to one place. “I’m going to go to the Piedmont app. And I know I’m going to book an appointment through here”. And then when it comes time for my appointment, it’ll tell me where to go and I don’t have to switch. So it makes for a really smooth journey.

[00:07:58] Katie Logan: Yeah. And even picking up with the paperwork and the registration process to get into a doctor’s appointment. As an example, it becomes sticky for the patient to follow along the next steps and just ease, ease the whole process for them.

[00:08:16] Colin Hung: So along this journey that you went through, in terms of digitizing your front door, that journey since 2015, what are one or two lessons that you’ve learned along the way that if you were to go back, you would do a little differently?

[00:08:31] Jen Melby: It’s a really good question. I think one of the things we did well, something that we kind of tackled head on was understanding that the strategy wasn’t just a digital solution. The strategy was really transforming around consumerism, meeting patients where they are, and transforming access to care. Digital was that platform that enabled it.

[00:08:52] So really the change management that it required was kind of a cultural shift to redesign our workflows, our policies and procedures, templates, physician’s control of what we can enable a patient to schedule. So that was really kind of where the hard work was, but digital was just a huge way that we could get there.

[00:09:12] So I think we did a really nice job of understanding that and connecting the dots for the rest of the organization on that. Obviously there’s probably several things that we look back we could think about: “man. I wish we could do that differently”.

[00:09:26] One of the things as we were reflecting on this last night in preparation was just thinking about how much our system has grown.

[00:09:32] So back when we were strategizing, I think we were a nine hospitals system. Now we’re 19. So we’ve experienced tremendous growth, doubling the size. I think, if we had more of a perspective around like here’s the digital standard and this standard digital experience that we kind of started with is we integrated each new facility on onboard.

[00:09:58] I think the adoption could be a lot easier. Now we’re, we’re kind of coming in and kind of proposing it as an option. And how do we enable digital to just help facilitate our growth rather than after the fact presenting our digital offerings as a nice to have. So using digital to help leverage sustainable growth for us.

[00:10:21] Katie Logan: You can imagine in addition to the facilities and like a wayfinding mapping there’s physicians and new communities that we’re serving. We want, as we said, that consistent transformational experience across all of the communities that we serve. So we’ve been talking a lot about this.

[00:10:38] How do you ensure it’s always on? So a feature, a functionality or a digital tool component, mobile app, online, scheduling, whatever it is…how do we go into that growth with that mindset? So we’re not coming back around trying to do it later. And I think that is something as organizations think about this and have growth potentially in their future to think about,

[00:11:01] Colin Hung: Let me ask you this question just around adoption. Was there anything that you felt you did really well in terms of getting people to adopt it or even letting people know that this was an option in terms of the patients and even your providers that this was something that people could use.

[00:11:18] Katie Logan: It’s really interesting because when we started, early on, it was still a little bit unexpected from healthcare consumers.

[00:11:27] What do you mean, I can open this app and get where I need to go or book this appointment or get into my chart? We’ve really been intentional about communication, not only through things like marketing campaigns, which is where we started early. But engaging operationally with the practices, with our care teams, with our employees to be champions and messengers of that as well.

[00:11:51] And I think that’s been a critical success factor. We probably could have done more of that early on, but we figured it out along the way.

[00:12:00] Jen Melby: I think one good example of that – I think staff engagement has really been able to take us from decent adoption to getting into really the adoption numbers that we’re looking at.

[00:12:13] When we first rolled off the wayfinding in the mobile app, we had contests and games that the staff could participate in. So we had the CEOs of our facilities take pictures of themselves in a certain area of the hospital. We hid it in the wayfinding mobile experience and then just challenged all of our staff members to download the app and go find them. Use it themselves, because the next time a patient comes up and says “I have no idea where I need to go can you help me?” They’ve used it before. So they’re better champions for the tools that we have.

[00:12:45] Colin Hung: That is an amazing idea. I love that.

[00:12:47] Jen Melby: It was pretty fun. People really liked it.

[00:12:50] Colin Hung: I can imagine that. Well, Katie, Jen, thank you so much for being on the program today. You’ve shared a lot of wonderful information. Really appreciate it.

[00:12:58] Jen Melby: Thanks for having us. Thank you.

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

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