Pluralsight – Upgrading to the Cloud to Start a New Chapter in Website Management
Rightpoint and Sparkle Match Unite to Modernize Digital Scheduling for a Nonprofit Healthcare System
Regional Nonprofit Healthcare System
Digital appointment scheduling is an important feature for 89% of US healthcare patients, but healthcare organizations (HCOs) often struggle with design and implementation, primarily because of the challenges related to compliant data access, unification, and orchestration across multiple systems. A major award-winning regional healthcare system leveraged its longstanding technology partnership with Rightpoint and new Sparkle Match technology to upgrade to a frictionless, real-time provider finder and appointment scheduling feature on its website. The result was a three-fold increase in online appointment bookings within the six months.
Starting with a Strategy
Addressing Patient and Family User Friction Points
Although 80% of Americans want to be able to schedule appointments online at any time, only one-third were able to schedule an appointment online in the past 12 months. When HCOs offer online scheduling options, difficulty integrating and sharing data across systems can make them a challenge for patients to use. "The client, like most healthcare sites, required multiple steps to find a doctor and then make the appointment, leaving them with a suboptimal experience. The HCO wanted to replace that with the ability to find a doctor, see their real-time calendar, and schedule online; that would elevate conversion rates and increase site engagement,” said April Spinale, Client Partner at Rightpoint.
Rightpoint’s CX team knew a better user experience could increase bookings and reduce cancellations and no-shows. A simpler provider search and scheduling system could also improve the HCO’s operational efficiency. The challenge would be securely integrating the HCO’s scheduling platforms across its many Southeastern US locations for a unified experience with many fewer steps.
Rightpoint chose Sparkle Match, a HIPAA-compliant patient scheduling solution that provides an intuitive user experience and real-time schedule data. “We could see where users were getting stuck,” said Marc Needham, Chief Growth Officer at Sparkle parent company Combinaut. “Rightpoint brought us in because we knew that together, we could make this process better for the HCO’s patients.”
Over the past 15 years, major hospital systems have leveraged Sparkle Match to connect millions of patients with providers and book appointments. Using machine learning with natural language processing and a robust taxonomy, Sparkle Match lets users search and navigate their provider and appointment options intuitively. The platform also gathers search and booking data to enable HCOs to optimize internal processes and operations.
For example, data on the most and least popular appointment times can help HCOs align overall provider availability with patient demand. Sparkle Match integrates with EHR and CRM platforms such as Epic and Salesforce Health Cloud, along with multiple data sources for patient surveys and reviews, provider credentials, insurance providers, clinical taxonomy and more, to bring all the relevant information into one place without incurring internal IT overhead.
Work
Restructuring Provider Search and Appointment Bookings to Drive Value
Rightpoint’s deep knowledge of the HCO’s web properties—earned over a decade of technology partnership—and Sparkle Match’s unique platform and trusted team allowed the collaboration to proceed efficiently, with a laser focus on client success. Rightpoint’s CX team members used Sparkle Match’s intuitive interface and extensive but easy to navigate search criteria to reimagine the HCO’s provider search.
Now, patients and their families can filter and sort their provider options by criteria including:
Name
Specialty
Location
Availability of new patient appointments
Availability of virtual appointments
Accepted insurance providers
Self-pay acceptance
For each provider, users may see patient ratings, reviews, provider credentials and biographies, and real-time appointment openings. Clicking on an appointment time walks users through a quick process to finalize the booking, with the option for new patients to book as a guest and make an account later. This experience echoes what patients are used to as consumers when they shop online, and it makes it easy for them to quickly set up appointments between all the other items on their to-do lists.
In addition to improving the online user experience for patients and their families, the integration of Sparkle Match into the HCO’s CX tech stack enables the use of attribution pathways to directly connect marketing campaign spend to patient appointments. Now, the HCO has the ability to calculate real ROI on specific campaigns, so campaign strategy optimization is faster and more effective. Other benefits for the HCO include pre- and post-scheduling patient engagement opportunities, more personalized experiences for returning patients, easy integration of marketing and referral campaigns, and technical SEO improvements based on faster page load speed and accessibility features.
“Having two trusted expert partners working together on our provider search and appointment booking redesign allowed our internal teams to remain focused on their primary projects while Rightpoint and Sparkle Match ensured all stakeholders were aligned, delivered a solution that dramatically improved online appointment bookings, and positioned us for more high-ROI digital improvements in the future.”
IT Director, Award-Winning Regional HCO
Outcomes
More Online Appointment Bookings and a Solid Foundation for Future Digital Initiatives
Online appointment bookings increased by 300% within six months of Rightpoint’s Sparkle Match implementation. That growth underlines the importance of a seamless user experience for doctor search and appointment scheduling.
For the HCO, it also represents significant improvements to operational efficiency, return patient appointments, revenue, market share, and profitability. Beyond those near-term returns on investment, the collaboration between Rightpoint and Sparkle Match has enabled the HCO to embrace a larger vision for its future digital initiatives, because they know their design and technology partners can bring their next ideas to life.
Your Invitation
Learn more about how Rightpoint and Sparkle Match can transform your healthcare organization’s provider finder and appointment scheduling experience. Contact marketing@rightpoint.com to arrange a conversation or request a Sparkle Match demo.
Our Contributions
Capabilities
Customer Experience
Content Strategy
Solution Architecture
Experience Design
Usability Testing
Product Development
