Albany Med-Columbia Memorial Health (CMH) in Hudson, New York, is a community hospital and health care system serving more than 100,000 residents in Columbia and Greene counties.
THE PROBLEM
CMH’s digital presence was unable to capture all the business opportunities in its area of influence. Patients searched their symptoms on Google and sought care at other hospitals and healthcare systems in the region that had a stronger digital presence.
In a hyper-localized industry like healthcare, this situation put CMH at a disadvantage compared to its competitors.
PROPOSAL
That’s why CMH launched a digital patient experience project at the front door, powered by artificial intelligence. The objectives of the project were:
- Get more sales to your front door. Convert online traffic into qualified patient leads.
- Provide the right care at the right time online 24/7.
- Improve the patient journey by reducing wait times and unnecessary steps.
- Gather valuable population insights (demographics, risk factors, initial symptoms, list of diagnoses, etc.).
“We were also eager to improve the overall patient experience,” said Dr. Ronald Pope, vice president of medical services, care centers, at Albany Med-Columbia Memorial Health. “We wanted to achieve this by streamlining the patient journey, with a particular focus on reducing waiting times and eliminating unnecessary steps in the process.
“In doing so, CMH sought to provide patients with a more seamless and efficient healthcare experience while optimizing its online presence to better serve our community,” he continued.
Vicenç Ferrer, managing director at supplier Mediktor, came to CMH with a proposal to use an AI-based medical assistant to empower patients when they feel more vulnerable and need guidance.
“Patients already tend to check their symptoms and seek help online, usually on platforms like Dr. Google, which turns out to be dangerous and endangers people’s health,” Pope said. “Mediktor suggested us to leverage this patient behavior and offer them an appropriate and secure digital solution instead.
“The AI space can become very complex and confusing, so I would look for plug-and-play AI systems that address specific problems and are easy to integrate into your organization’s tech stack.”
Dr. Ronald Pope, Albany Med-Columbia Memorial Health
“The intersection of AI and healthcare has created new opportunities for healthcare organizations, and we decided to leverage these to provide patients with online, on-demand healthcare guidance at the onset of symptoms,” he continued. “Patients can now make informed decisions and know the best next step in their care journey, allowing CMH to compete head-to-head with our regional competitors.”
This would allow patients to quickly evaluate their symptoms online and be referred to the appropriate CMH point of care. Such a strategy would optimize the use of time and resources for both patients and healthcare professionals.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
“We have built an AI-based healthcare navigation assistant, powered by Mediktor, into our website, app and condition-specific landing pages, making it available to our patients anywhere, anytime to provide our community with high-quality and compassionate care,” Pope explains . .
“By providing patients with an automated care navigation assistant when they feel more vulnerable, we have been able to qualify patients early and direct them to the appropriate level of care: telemedicine, primary care and pediatrics, or the emergency room,” he continued. “That’s why we increased our online business and prevented patients from visiting our competitors.”
The medical team needed to introduce the protocols and guidelines used to triage patients offline and by phone into the vendor’s digital healthcare system and integrate the endpoints to provide a smooth, seamless user experience.
“In addition to offering the healthcare navigation assistant in our web and app, we decided to start creating condition-specific landing pages,” Pope said. “We just released a respiratory specific landing page and we expect this will help us better manage seasonal lung diseases, including the potential tripledemic of influenza, COVID-19 and RSV that we may face next fall.”
These landing pages contain educational content and encourage visitors to monitor symptoms and provide them with medical guidance if necessary.
“Our marketing team has created initiatives to promote our new healthcare navigation assistant across all our channels using both SEO and SEM strategies, to familiarize patients with this new tool and show them how to use it properly Pope said. “We also started promoting this innovation offline and distributed flyers in the common areas of the doctor and the hospital.”
RESULTS
Pope reported numerous successes from the project so far:
- By combining industry data for the average cost of ER, PCP and telemedicine visits without insurance with the total number of patients sent to CMH to book appointments through the new system, CMH estimates it will see a three times greater ROI on its investment has passed.
- Positive feedback from CMH patients using the new system results in an average Net Promoter Score of 72.
- 9,312 assessments completed in 12 months.
- 39.43% of patients use the system repeatedly.
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
“Digital transformation has finally hit the healthcare industry, especially since the outbreak of COVID-19, and AI-powered digital healthcare systems are playing a relevant role in this new paradigm,” said Pope. “AI-based systems have already disrupted other industries such as banking and travel, so my advice is to embrace this.
“The key, as always when deploying innovation, is to clearly identify and execute the use case,” he continued. “Technology by itself will never solve a problem. It is the right use of a technology that will successfully address a problem.”
When it comes to AI-powered systems, there’s a lot of talk about white box versus black box technology, he added.
“I recommend working with systems that use white-box technology because you can always figure out why an AI algorithm came up with a specific recommendation and hold it accountable in the same way we do with humans ” he advised.
“Additionally, the AI space can become very complex and confusing, so I would look for plug-and-play AI systems that address specific problems and are easy to integrate into your organization’s tech stack,” he concluded . “There are an increasing number of generalist large language models on the market today that require lengthy and costly implementations that are not suitable for the vast majority of healthcare provider organizations.”
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