In our last issue, we walked through the experience of scheduling primary care at 50+ health systems and four “disruptors.” The main questions: What was the experience like for a patient to book care online/ over the phone and how consistent was that experience across systems?
When we presented similar work least year, we heard from our members that you are just as interested—if not more so—in access to specialty care. Therefore, we convened a focus group earlier this year with eight Strategy Catalyst members to get advice for how to test access to specialty care. We decided to test three services/ specialties in this year’s secret shopping evaluation: gastroenterology, mammography, and OBGYN care. We chose these three because:
Each specialty or service is preventative and patients could plausibly book them on their own (GI consults/colonoscopies, breast cancer screenings, well-woman exams).
Patients might repeatedly return to these specialists over many years, contributing to brand loyalty and patient retention.
There’s substantial downstream revenue potential among these service lines for either serious conditions that require more intensive forms of treatment or for L&D services.
To test access, we tried to book these services both online and over the phone. We noted key details around wait times, days to appointment, and much more, capturing both quantitative and qualitative feedback. (For a more detailed description of the methodology, read our previous edition or watch our recent webinar. If you’d like to see how your system performed, please email us at strategycatalyst@hmacademy.com and we’ll share your personalized report.)
Key findings
The easiest and fastest service to book was imaging. Mammography appointments were offered soonest (within 4 business days on average over the phone), while GI appointments were the least accessible (within 32 business days on average).
Like with primary care, care was available much sooner when scheduling online than over the phone. This was particularly true for GI and OBGYN care.
Scheduling was often contingent on having referrals and orders, although this varied across systems. Many systems refused to offer appointments unless our secret shopper met certain requirements, including having a referral for GI care (required by 49% of systems) and orders for mammograms (required by 21% of systems).
Our secret shopper was directed to providers outside the system for GI care at 18% of systems we tested—an obvious source of revenue leakage.
We’ll walk through these findings in more detail and lay out the results. At the conclusion of this deep dive, we’ll offer our recommendations for how health systems can create a smoother patient experience and leave less revenue on the table.