Symptom Checker Solutions for Children’s Hospitals
Benefits to your Children’s Hospital
Now more than ever, parents need trusted sources for healthcare advice at their fingertips. Children often have their first temperature spike long after the office is closed. Weekends can be the busiest day for sports injuries and the first signs of an earache commonly start after the child has slept for a few hours. For each symptom scenario, parents and teens can turn to our self-care tools to begin their healthcare journey.
Our symptom checker can then direct patient flow, linking users to the appropriate level of care such as your:
- Self-scheduling options from your website or patient portal
- Telehealth services or e-visits
- Facilities: Walk-In Centers, Urgent Cares or Emergency Rooms
- Phone scheduling options in your clinics, primary care offices or contact center
- Expert home care tips and how to monitor the symptoms
- Whether you implement the web application, native mobile engagement app, or integrate within your patient portal, the tools will drive more value from your digital investments. Children’s Hospital analytics prove a solid return on investment (ROI); often greater than 10:1. See the case study below.
Benefits for your Parents and their Children
- Provides help with healthcare decisions, day or night
- Directs appropriate actions: if and when they need healthcare services
- Offers quick fixes for minor injuries and illnesses
- Directly connects to fulfillment: just one tap or click to reach the right resource
Case Study
Children’s Hospital Wisconsin migrated to our new CareCatalyst (mobile) platform in 2018. An immediate win was the Symptom Summary screen, which displayed a recommended action and a list of best options for fulfillment (through Children’s). The offerings are sensitive to the time of day, which is key to their Urgent Care strategy.
Their next enhancement was a Select Clinic feature, presenting the user a drop-list of Children’s 25 primary care clinics. Users select their child’s home clinic, which displays at the top of the main menu. This automates connections to their base-clinic when an appointment is needed.
Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin engaged clinic staff to promote the app and make it part of their patient on-boarding. To make it fun, Children’s offered an incentive: a pizza party to the clinic driving the highest percentage of patients to download the app. App distribution increased, as did use of other new features: online scheduling at the clinics and Get in Line Now (urgent care reservation system).
In just 3 months, Children’s realized a revenue contribution of greater than $350,000 – a 10:1 return on their investment. Note: Children’s of Wisconsin projects value using a contribution margin of downstream revenue in the first year after the initial visit. The $350,000+ was calculated using the revenue contribution figures from their finance department. This data was revealed at the Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit: Strategic Mobile Initiatives to Enhance the Medical Home.