How Renown Health Revolutionized Their Patient Experience And Increased Operational Efficiencies

Overview

Renown Health, a not-for-profit health system, operates 9 urgent care centers and provides telemedicine virtual visits in and around the Reno, NV area. Although they already had been using a scheduling and queuing solution, they experienced a cumbersome process of accurately scheduling and communicating wait times for both urgent care and virtual visits. Patients were unsatisfied with the check-in process and this system was both costly and inconvenient for their needs. In looking for a replacement, Renown sought to unify the scheduling and queuing process across their entire convenient care organization—which serves more than 134,000 patient visits annually—as well as improve the entirety of the patient experience and quell staff and internal frustrations.

Solution

The leadership team at Renown engaged Solv to replace their current scheduling and queuing provider. They sought out to accomplish four primary objectives:

1. Reduce wait times by at least 10 min by improving the urgent care scheduling and check-in process
2. Extend telemedicine services to patients through the same scheduling solution
3. Load balance patient traffic between clinics though an online booking hub
4. Enhance the online reputation and ratings

Solv implemented a product suite with an intuitive user interface, anchored by online bookings for each of Renown’s urgent care centers and telemedicine visits conducted from the clinics. In a compressed timeline as to not incur additional costs from their previous software vendor incumbent, Solv implemented the following:

• Online Bookings. Solv implemented an online booking solution that accommodated Renown’s requirement of seamlessly marrying the scheduling of both in-person and virtual visits supported within each urgent care, while maintaining a positive walk-in experience. The intuitive consumer experience has resulted in a 30% increase in conversion of website traffic to bookings.
• Clinic load balancing. Solv launched a multi-location booking page displaying wait times at all of Renown’s urgent care centers, which helped steer patients to less-busy clinics, reducing wait times at busier clinics.
• Insurance Card Scanning. At the time of booking, patients are able to use the camera on their phone to take and upload a photo of their insurance card. Solv scans the card, transcribes the details, and performs an initial eligibility check before the patient walks in, saving the front desk time. Nearly 40% of all patients are adding a photo of their card.
• AI-powered Patient Queuing. All patients—both in-person and virtual—are merged into a single queuing system that utilizes an AI-powered scheduling algorithm to ensure all online bookings are seen at the right time, walk-ins don’t wait longer than necessary and the clinic workflow is as efficient as possible. This queuing system can increase or throttle booking availability automatically so no Renown patient has a bad experience. As a result, Renown has reduced wait times for all patients, and those who book ahead spend 58% fewer minutes in the waiting room.
• Mobile Wait Management. Patients arriving at Renown’s clinics—as well as those waiting virtually—are added to the queue and elect to receive text messages that communicate wait time and queue position, untethering them from the waiting room. The front desk can easily text-chat with patients using a friendly interface.
• Telemedicine. Solv integrated with Renown’s existing telemedicine software provider so patients could easily schedule and book a virtual visit through Solv that was delivered through Renown’s existing technology.
• Reputation Management. As part of the feedback process, patients are invited to leave a private review directly with the clinic through the Solv, or a public review on Google. This system allows Renown to ensure verified, acceptable, quality reviews are published.
• Real-time Reporting. Renown has had complete control of business performance through Solv’s real-time Pulse dashboard. The clinic operations team can monitor each patient engagement point from their smartphones, both at the individual clinic level and at an aggregate health system view.

Results

Renown’s partnership with Solv has unified and simplified the online scheduling capabilities across both in-person and telemedicine visits within their urgent care centers. Across only 9 clinics, the partnership generated more than $7.13 million from online bookings in the first 5 months. Aligning with Renown’s stated goals, the average walk-in patient wait time was reduced by 13 min (down to 26 min for walk-ins and 12 min for online bookings). Patient satisfaction has reached an all-time high with more than 700 new Google reviews of which more than 80% are 5-star ratings. Renown has completely modernized their patient experience, and patients have taken notice and responded. Today more than 30% of urgent care patient encounters originate through online scheduling, up from 17% before using Solv.

33% reduction in wait times for walk-in patients

Five months following implementation, the average patient waited only 26 minutes compared to the 39 minute wait time the average patient experienced pre-Solv. Additionally, patients booking online waited 57.8% less than walk-in patients.

37.5% improvement in online ratings and reviews

Online rating scores were boosted from a 3.2 star average to a 4.4 star average across the same 8 clinics. Of the more than 700 new Google reviews created (3x more per month than previous), 89% were 4+ stars, with 80% being 5-star ratings.

$7.13 mil in patient revenue generated through online bookings

Five months following implementation, the average patient waited only 26 minutes compared to the 39 minute wait time the average patient experienced pre-Solv. Additionally, patients booking online waited 57.8% less than walk-in patients.