UCSF Orthopaedic Institute Goes Live with Patient Connect

Major Milestone from the Digital Patient Experience Automates Patient Referral Communication, Improving the Patient Experience and Speed to Visit

The Digital Patient Experience (DPE; link internal to UCSF) team has completed a big step forward in its multi-year, multi-phase initiative to create a unified digital experience enabling patients to easily access and interact with care delivery at UCSF. Starting today, the Orthopaedic Institute is live with Patient Connect 0.5, a cornerstone of the initiative, which focuses improving patient access by automating the patient referral process and giving the patient more transparency and control as they set out on their care journey. Four additional practices will begin using Patient Connect soon, along with numerous others throughout 2020 and 2021.

The Orthopaedic Institute’s call center receives 450 – 600 calls per day and manages approximately 80 referrals in a manual process that previously included multiple patient callbacks, often to different referral coordinators who would need to step through the same manual workflow each time. The DPE team worked with Orthopaedics over a 9-month pilot to develop and test features including patient self-scheduling, appointment waitlists, and automated reminders.

Patient Connect is a technology solution that allows referral coordinators to more quickly identify the appropriate physicians and visit type for a patient’s condition, and to initiate Patient Self-Scheduling via a text messaging system. Text messages direct patients to a secure page where they can choose from the pre-selected providers and schedule their own appointments all from their mobile device or computer. Also, without staff effort, patients are offered to join a waitlist (based on department rules) and can accept via text in case an earlier appointment becomes available. Appointments are also confirmed by text. Finally, to reduce late notice cancellations, again without staff effort, patients can cancel, rebook, or be added to a waitlist as part of appointment reminders.

If the referral coordinator needs to speak with the patient prior to scheduling (e.g., more information is needed, such as scans, lab results, or insurance information) the referral coordinator can use Patient Connect to send a scripted message to alert the patient to call the practice.

Patient Connect is integrated with APeX and Cadence so practice staff has full visibility of the appointments and MyChart users can manage their appointments if desired. Waitlist, reminders and the patient’s ability to cancel/rebook are configured with the practice.

“The development and implementation team who worked with us understands the pain points of the clinic. Patient Connect is highly customizable and the team really listens to requests for improvements. It is a great product,” said Mansi Shah, Assistant Director, Orthopaedics at UCSF Medical Center.

In the next release, the experience will be further improved in the following ways:

• Patients will automatically be notified by text as soon as their referral is received in the system.

• Patients will be prompted to photograph and upload required insurance information without intervention from the referral coordinator.

• The patient appointment search and selection user interface will include enhanced filters, maps, and provider photos and bios, and will also build upon brand work from UCSF Marketing to better highlight our brand elements of care and empathy.

Patient Connect was built by the DPE team within the Center for Digital Health Innovation (CDHI) with collaboration and leadership from Clinical Systems, Marketing, and the Faculty Practice Office, as well as IT, Health Informatics, and the Clinical Innovation Center. The Practice Optimization (PAO) team consults with each practice’s clinical and administrative staff to implement an optimized scheduling template redesign, scheduling best practices, and new patient pathways in Cadence (the scheduling component of the Epic EHR system). The DPE Self Scheduling team then builds upon this work to implement into the Patient Connect. More detailed information about Patient Connect can be found at https://dpe.ucsf.edu/blog/introducing-patient-connect-05-automating-patient-referral-communication. (Link internal to UCSF)