Mapping out the patient experience

Introduction

Leaders at the University of Tennessee Medical Center (UTMC) are committed to offering and delivering innovative solutions to their community. But Michael Saad—Senior VP, Chief Information Officer, and recent CIO of the Year ORBIE award winner for Tennessee—saw the unique frustrations patients and their families encountered when navigating UTMC campuses and sought to ease this pain point in the patient experience.

“We were receiving a lot of feedback from our patients in surveys—including for our HCAHPS scores—that they were having a hard time navigating the campus,” shares Saad. “And with 40,000 visitors a day, there’s just not enough volunteers or staff to help that many people. We set out to find a way to make the experience better by helping patients navigate from their current home to campus, know where to park, offer step-by-step navigation to their appointment, and then back to where they parked. We ultimately saw it as a customer satisfaction initiative, and our surveys have since reflected that increase in satisfaction.”

Saad reviewed detailed patient feedback and interacted with the community to better understand where patients and their families struggled to find their way and the impact these difficulties had on the total care encounter. He then worked with the C-suite to develop a more robust solution.

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Challenge

With over 2.5M square feet of building structure, the sheer size of the UT campus made it difficult for patients to find their way to appointments—even with volunteer staff. Wayfinding was a pressing priority. However, additional features, such as appointment management, remote health access, prescription refill, secure provider messaging and more were also needed.

“The wayfinding solution was very popular for our patients on campus, but we knew that this app could accomplish even more,” Saad says. “We started to work with Gozio to brainstorm together what else could be done to support our other patients not on-site—especially during the pandemic. And that’s when we pivoted to add telehealth scheduling and provider appointment capabilities, too.”

Solution

UTMC wanted a robust mobile application to deliver the best in care services and support while reducing or eliminating friction points in the patient journey.

Leaders from UTMC met with the team at Gozio Health to create a custom mobile solution that could offer wayfinding assistance and empower patients to take charge of their entire healthcare experience. Their efforts led to the development and deployment of a robust, comprehensive solution to meet patient needs and strengthen their impression of the health system.

The UTMC Way app offers patients a host of features and abilities, including:

Precision navigation to the UTMC campus and all facilities in the network
Access to online scheduling and remote health services (eVisit)
The ability to locate the closest UTMC urgent care center, with built-in navigation and hours of operation
Find a Physician” functionality—by name or specialty
Viewing lab results, often within 36 hours
Reviewing clinical documents and records
A portal to securely message providers—when the office responds, an email is sent alerting patients that there is a new message available in the portal
Managing appointments
Accessing medical history
Managing insurance and paying medical center bills
Connecting the app to Apple Health Management
Refilling prescriptions
Searching for events and career opportunities
Vehicle parking reminders

Based on feedback from staff, the Gozio team created a private portal inside the app that allows staff members to access non-public location data, such as conference rooms for events and annual meetings. This has resulted in better attendance and a greater sense of community among UTMC team members.

Results

Soon after debuting the UTMC Way app, UTMC recorded high levels of engagement. Patients and their families have downloaded the UTMC Way app over 32,000 times, with 244,000 total sessions completed. A deeper dive into the data shows:

61% are returning users
33% have used the app four or more times
12% have accessed the app nine or more times

There is little doubt that efforts to deliver an exceptional patient experience from beginning to end with Gozio’s guidance and expertise continues to pay off. Today, the UTMC Way app empowers UTMC to provide the best possible care and service to its communities.