Improving Digital Patient Engagement During COVID-19: Geisinger’s Evolution

Although it was a priority for many healthcare organizations even before the COVID-19 pandemic, industry leaders have had to ramp up the frequency in which they leverage various digital channels to continue engaging healthcare consumers and earn loyalty during the health crisis.

One such organization that has made real progress in its digital engagement strategies is the Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger. The 12-hospital health system’s vice president of digital engagement, Sarah Sommer, recently discussed how digital engagement strategies have changed during the pandemic, which digital tools are being leveraged successfully, and the lessons learned around consumerism that can be applied to a post-COVID world. Below are excerpts of her email discussion with Healthcare Innovation.

How have patient engagement efforts at the health system changed during the pandemic? Can you detail a few specific examples?

Geisinger has become more agile in designing and delivering care and communications to patients. Marketing, IT, clinical operations, HR and the Steele Institute for Innovation forged even tighter partnerships to rapidly develop and deploy digital strategies and engagement capabilities to deliver frequent, critical support to our staff, clinical providers, EMS providers, patients, health plan members, community leaders, donors, health plan employer groups, and so on.

Which digital tools are you specifically leveraging?

For customer education, we leverage email campaigns using Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Virtual Town Halls using Skype, Teams and Facebook. For customers visiting our website and patient portal users for support, we deployed a “get care now virtual chatbot” with Gyant [AI patient relationship technology] integrated with our Kyruus ProviderMatch Find a Provider application. Our clinical operations teams ramped up over 1,000 providers on Intouch’s telemedicine platform to offer patients continuity of care through telemedicine visits. We distributed COVID-19 test results using our Epic MyChart portal. We implemented Epic’s MyChart Care Companion to enable at-home symptom monitoring for patients who tested positive for COVID-19. We are piloting Easy Check-in by text message to help patients arriving for appointments to announce their arrival but wait outside the facility or in their cars to maintain social distancing. We also leverage our TigerConnect secure messaging provider to alert staff of time sensitive information such as changes in visitor protocol or needs for rapid supply inventory.

Health systems meeting consumers’ evolving needs can be difficult at any time, but especially during a health crisis. What have been the biggest challenges during this time from a digital engagement perspective?

This pandemic exposed the need for us to have agile, dynamic, frequent communications with a complex set of stakeholder segments. As the reality of COVID-19 began to unfold, we needed to support our employees and communities with daily updates on rapidly changing information, such as screening criteria, testing and safety protocols, and visitor guidelines. As the pandemic has stretched on, we have had to balance sustaining COVID-19 related communications with the safe reopening of our facilities for patient care. As with any crisis, there are silver linings as we have come together to provide new solutions to support our patients and members. We expanded our evening and weekend access for care. We greatly scaled use of drive through flu shot clinics, administering over 8,000 flu shots to-date. We stood up new on-demand video visit capabilities for members.

Are there any lessons learned around patient engagement that you believe could be applied in a post-pandemic world? If so, which ones?

Consumer demand for virtual care and visits in our markets was not high prior to COVID–now–with many patients being offered tele-visits as a care option during the pandemic, we’re seeing high adoption and satisfaction that I strongly believe will increase consumers’ willingness to try and adopt future digital solutions.

What are some ways your team will continue to progress in the coming months and how will that success be measured?

Success will be measured by how well we support our local communities in minimizing the risks and impact of COVID-19. Our “North Star” is simple: keep everyone safe while also continuing to provide patients with safe, quality care they need for any health concerns during this pandemic.

Our patients and members are consumers; however, the expectation for digital service in healthcare has lagged behind other industries. With COVID-19 accelerating consumers’ use of digital health capabilities, we should see a strong upward curve in openness to new virtual care or on-demand models. Our driving vision for Geisinger’s digital engagement strategy is to make health easier for consumers, to reduce customer effort when they are attempting to schedule an appointment, pay a bill, or care for loved one. We’re on a journey to develop a 360-degree view of each customer so we can deliver powerful end to end digital experiences.

Sarah Sommer is the vice president of digital engagement at Geisinger