Case Studies

MedBridge, a two-clinic outpatient group in West Virginia, envisions a future of managing conditions effortlessly through technology and closing the gap between the patient and the provider. Part of that vision involves robust patient messaging, so they entrusted PatientBond to help them increase patient loyalty and patient visits.

Midwest Express Clinic found that their employees were having to spend more of their time making phone calls to patients, which wasted staff time and hurt patient engagement. They turned to PatientBond to help reduce these staff burdens while increasing patient satisfaction.

Higher Satisfaction Rates through Personalized Engagement

AccordiaRX*, a leading specialty pharmacy, uses leading-edge technologies and targeted communication strategies to give patients the tools they need to manage complex and chronic conditions. Through ongoing collaboration with PatientBond, AccordiaRX has improved patient satisfaction through personalized text and email communications to each patient’s psychographic profile. 

*Actual customer name blinded by request

MedAD Sherpa* is a broker/advisor helping Medicare eligible consumers in Ohio and Kentucky choose a Medicare Advantage plan. MedAd Sherpa saw no difference in its rate of growth after pursuing a marketing campaign including TV, radio and direct mail. Based on the recommendation of a major local Employee Benefits Consultant, MedAd Sherpa approached PatientBond to determine whether its psychographic segmentation model could boost its membership.

*Actual customer name blinded by request

“The increase in patient payment collections and cost savings from automation make going with PatientBond a no-brainer.”

- Director of Revenue Cycle Management, Priority Care*

Priority Care* recognized the need to increase patient financial responsibility payments to help fuel their growth, envisioning a comprehensive workflow that would engage patients throughout the payment process.

PatientBond and Priority Care worked together to develop an advanced workflow to reach out to patients throughout the entire payment process. This started with letting a patient know when their claim had been submitted all the way to providing an easy way to pay the remaining statement balance online.

*Actual customer name blinded by request

“Implementing mobile engagement in partnership with PatientBond last year was one of the best decisions I made. It has provided us an invaluable asset for reaching out and connecting with the patient much earlier in the billing process, which we otherwise would not have been able to.”

- Kevin Don, Executive Director, Global Business Services

Falck USA, one of the largest private providers of 24-hour ambulance transport and 9-1-1 response services, had a hard time collecting patient payments for ambulance trips since many aren't covered by insurance. Instead of accepting the bad debt as part of their business model, they turned to PatientBond for a solution.

Resound Health Research worked with PatientBond to develop a recruitment program that personalized communications to the target patient audience based on identified psychographic characteristics. Personalized messaging was carefully crafted for each psychographic segment based on the understanding of what motivates each patient in their health choices and communication preferences. The recruitment messaging was then organized into 4 waves of communications through text, emails and automated calls (IVR).

An integral part of the healthcare delivery system in the United States includes the provision of Workers Compensation services. Physicians Immediate Care (PIC) manages this process, which involves three stakeholders: the patient (employee); the employer; and the provider. Managing effective communication between all three stakeholders has proven to be a manual and time-consuming effort. PIC turned to PatientBond to help automate this process, providing better service to patients/employees and employers.

Patients received a condition-specific follow-up text messages 72 hours after their visit. Based on their response to the 3-4 question survey, patients were prompted to schedule a follow-up appointment.

After seeing great results with PatientBond’s payment reminder solution, Priority Care wanted to use PatientBond’s digital solution to optimize post-visit communication. Priority Care realized that making phone calls or writing individual emails to every patient who visits a clinic is resource-intensive and infeasible. Priority Care wanted to increase patient engagement and drive repeat visits to their clinics using PatientBond’s Condition-Specific Messaging Product.

Improving Lab Result Speed & Accuracy while Reducing Staff Burden in Outreach 

PriorityCare*, a mid-size Urgent Care provider in the Western United States, implemented the PatientBond Platform to achieve efficiency in lab result notification and streamline the result delivery and communication process. Through text messages, patients are securely notified and can easily verify their identity and view their results along contact information for help or questions. Patients can also specify lab result delivery preferences.

Enhancing Communication, Improving Care

AccordiaRX*, a leading specialty pharmacy, uses leading-edge technologies and targeted communication strategies to give patients the tools they need to manage complex and chronic conditions. Through ongoing collaboration with PatientBond, AccordiaRX is improving adherence through personalizing text and email communications to each patient’s psychographic profile. Personalized communications are automated throughout the therapy workflow for specialty medications including Humira, Repatha, Xeljanz, Fasenra, and Cystic Fibrosis Medications.

This case study explores how PatientBond helped AccordiaRX:

• Improve medication possession ratio

• Improve on-therapy rates

• Lower discontinuation rates

“After TriHealth started using psychographic segmentation, it saw a 28% reduction in at least one “risk” in participants (for example, reducing BMI, lowering A1c levels, decreasing blood pressure, increasing physical activity, etc.).”

This Advisory Board case study focuses on TriHealth, a leading health system in Cincinnati, Ohio, and its use of PatientBond’s psychographic segmentation model with its health coaches to motivate lifestyle modifications among its wellness program participants.

This publication also includes a case study of how PatientBond’s psychographic model and digital member communications helped AmeriHealth Caritas, a managed Medicaid plan, increase telehealth registrations 7.5X to reduce unnecessary emergency room visits.

“PatientBond's two-way text platform has increased the communication volume between our team and patient inquiries. We went from a single-user platform to a multi-user version allowing for faster response time and ability for users to multi-task.”

- Sophia Dones, Medical Office Professional

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to accelerate an already rapidly-evolving healthcare marketplace, and urgent care in particular, healthcare executives seek to find ways to simplify processes and meet the needs of their patient population. Solutions that free medical staff from administrative burden allow these critical resources more time to dedicate to those most affected.

As the challenges of the pandemic added pressure on Marque’s ability to provide timely care and meet their vision, leaders engaged PatientBond to enhance their digital patient journey, which would help them rise to the current challenge and meet the needs of their patients with optimal efficiency.

“PatientBond is an easy to work with because of their aligned intent of customer success.”

- Director of Revenue Cycle Management

Priority Care*, a chain of 33 urgent care centers in New York and Illinois, realized they needed to intervene to reduce the negative impact of delayed patient payments. With collection costs growing and the amount of patient payments decreasing, they turned to PatientBond to maximize patient collections.

“PatientBond was instrumental in helping us increase kept patient appointments, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

- Kevin Morgan, Director of Information Technology

Rocky Mountain Urgent Care & Family Medicine currently has seven locations in Colorado, offering a great patient experience through comprehensive, compassionate and high-quality healthcare.

Always looking to enhance the patient experience and drive efficiencies, Rocky Mountain Urgent Care wanted to improve the process of setting, rescheduling, and canceling appointments. This included the reduction of time spent reminding patients of appointments and managing customer call backs.

“…easy to work with and clear on how the process worked.”

Lansing Urgent Care is a growing urgent care chain in Michigan, and it prides itself in offering top-tier care for an unbeatable urgent care experience. That’s why Lansing Urgent Care was eager to find a solution that reduced patient stress while addressing inefficiencies with their patient payment process.

PatientBond collaborated with Lansing Urgent Care to reduce the number of accounts that went to collections and costs from paper statements and phone calls for overdue accounts.

“I have always thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could leverage the marketing secrets of the most successful consumer product companies and repurpose their leading-edge techniques and tools into the healthcare sector. Then maybe, just maybe, we could use these powers for good to motivate lots of people to make healthier choices.”

- Keith Maccannon, Director of Marketing, Community Relations and Outreach, AmeriHealth Caritas District of Columbia

AmeriHealth Caritas District of Columbia is the largest Medicaid Managed Care Organization in the District of Columbia with more than 100,000 members. AmeriHealth Caritas DC offered a 24/7 telehealth services option for common, uncomplicated illnesses and issues, yet some members continued to use Emergency Room services unnecessarily. Amerihealth Caritas DC worked with PatientBond to encourage telehealth sign-up and utilization. Moreover, this effort was undertaken during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“PatientBond has allowed us to engage with our patients in a more meaningful way. We are now able to check back with patients via text messages to see how they are feeling, understand what providers and clinics have the highest rating, and grow our reviews through social media sites.”

“PatientBond is a supportive partner that listens, responds quickly and makes requested enhancements. Our relationship creates a better product for both companies. We value the tool to make data-driven decisions, to ensure we deliver quality care and an outstanding patient experience.”

First Care currently operates 17 urgent care locations in Kentucky and Indiana. First Care realized that establishing a digital relationship with every patient, starting with their first visit, was instrumental to creating loyal customers and fostering repeat visits. It was also key to attracting new patients through increased online reputation scores, while also improving patient self-pay collections.

“Going with PatientBond was one of the best decisions our company could have made. No more wasted paper and postage, quicker patient reaction time to balances, and ease of payments for patients have made for higher incoming revenue. I would recommend PatientBond in a heartbeat to those looking to increase revenue.”

As patients assume more of the financial burden for medical expenses, urgent care centers are spending more money, staff resources and time collecting medical payments. Unfortunately, this trend will most likely accelerate in the coming years.

Priority Care*, a chain of urgent care centers in three regions (Arizona, North Carolina and Texas), was facing a backlog of past due invoices totalling nearly $200,000 in one region alone. Priority Care invested significant staff resources in making follow-up calls and mailing printed reminders pursuing patient payments.

Priority Care turned to PatientBond for its automated payment reminders application to increase payment collections in a more effective and efficient manner.

*Name changed because customer asked to remain anonymous.

“We are using PatientBond’s psychographics and capabilities to better know our members and personalize their healthcare journeys.”

A large, private health plan asked for PatientBond’s help with health and wellness initiatives designed to increase member actions and engagement for key quality measures. The health plan also had a number of members who had earned rewards for wellness activities, but the members had not created accounts to receive and use their rewards dollars. 

When PatientBond’s outreach campaign work began mid-year, the health plan had more than 75,000 members who still needed to complete essential preventive health screenings that calendar year. PatientBond’s campaigns were focused on motivating members to complete these specific screenings.

“PatientBond has helped our operations/processes on many parts of our business, and overall has been one of the best tools implemented and we saw immediate improvement. PatientBond is priced reasonably and we’ve seen our monthly cost re-captured not just in labor savings, but in building a loyal patient base that is more engaged.”

Midwest Express Urgent Care Clinic offers family care, injury and extensive care and a variety of other services at six suburban locations in Illinois and Indiana. The clinic enlisted PatientBond to help them drive desired patient behavior changes.PatientBond customizes communications to patients’ motivations and channel preferences using a proprietary psychographic segmentation patient communication system.

“PatientBond’s psychographic segmentation model and consumer insights have significantly boosted the effectiveness of our clinics’ marketing and patient acquisition efforts.”

Statcare Urgent Care, a chain of urgent care centers based around New York City, uses digital marketing (e.g., banner advertisements) to promote its services and differentiate its brand in a crowded marketplace.

While its efforts have yielded good results, Statcare’s growth rate had begun to level off. A progressive business, Statcare recognized that its “one size fits all” messaging could be enhanced with consumer insights and psychographic segmentation.

"PatientBond is an absolute game changer for us."

Total Access Urgent Care (TAUC) wanted to reduce outstanding patient collections and increase revenue by efficiently engaging patients regarding their responsibility balances. Their prior efforts involved a full-time resource making 70 pay-reminder phone calls each day, yielding a collection rate of only 5 percent. 

TAUC was so impressed by PatientBond's performance it is expanding its utilization with multiple marketing and clinical applications. 

Download this one-page case study for a quick overview of how PatientBond quadrupled TAUC's patient payment collections while reducing resource requirements for greater savings.

The Urgent Care Challenge

Urgent care centers — walk-in medical clinics that treat minor conditions, address injuries and conduct imaging and blood tests — have seen significant growth in recent years. The approximately 9,300 centers in the U.S., up from 8,000 in 2008, account for 160 million visits annually and generated $16 billion in 2015. The industry is expected to grow 5.8 percent annually through 2018.

To differentiate its network from other urgent care centers and options in the marketplace, Chicago-based Immediate MD Urgent Care Centers wanted to develop a brand that was focused on high quality of care around episodic events to drive repeat visits in the future, and to deliver this care in a premier customer service environment.

Immediate MD implemented the PatientBond platform to create a new appointment follow-up process to replace its phone-based system, which was labor intensive, inefficient and inconsistent.

A Paper Presented by Louis Jenis, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, at the Lumbar Spine Research Society 10th Annual Meeting, 2017

Published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgical Focus, Apr 2017/Vol 42/No. 4/Pages A1-A40

While much focus has been on placed on preoperative patient periods, less attention has been given to the immediate postoperative period and identifying potential means of motivating patients and directing behaviors.

PatientBond was used to engage patients during both preoperative and postoperative periods to motivate healthy behaviors and reduce the risk of hospital readmission. PatientBond, a platform for automating patient engagement (emails, text messages, Interactive Voice Response), uses a proprietary psychographic segmentation model to customize messaging according to patients' motivations, attitudes and beliefs.

The readmission rate during this pilot study was 1.45 percent and overall response rate to psychographic messaging was 87.5 percent. It was determined that this platform is useful for engaging patients.

As Seen in Telehealth & Medicine Today

The Cost of Missed Appointments

Missed patient appointments represent a significant cost to medical practices. It's been estimated that missed appointments cost the U.S. healthcare system $150 billion annually, representing inefficient use of medical assets and negatively impacting patient care and satisfaction.

PatientBond is one highly effective and money-saving way to reduce patient no-shows. This cloud-based, targeted healthcare engagement platform enables hospitals and health systems to improve care coordination and patient loyalty using a preference-based, personalized communications framework.