Conversational digital agents deliver more than 70% of all digital submission volume
LifeLink today announced a successful, large scale conversational technology deployment at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, with a patient engagement chatbot handling the majority of online patient appointment requests. The LifeLink chatbot uses text messaging to interact with patients and collect information related to appointments being requested through the Jefferson website.
Jefferson is a multi-state health system whose flagship hospital is Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City, Philadelphia. The health system provides a range of primary to highly specialized care through 14 hospitals and more than 50 outpatient and urgent care locations across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The chatbot is currently available in the Center City location and will be expanded to other locations in the coming months.
“Our patients want seamless digital experiences as part of their care experience,” said Neil Gomes, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Jefferson Health. “The ability to request an appointment through the conversational technology of a chatbot is a key innovation opportunity to improve the patient experience. The LifeLink chatbots are now handling the majority of digital volume and outperforming traditional online forms by 150%, which is very significant.”
Patient engagement is at the top of the innovation priority list as the healthcare industry races to become more consumer-centric. Mobile technology has replaced the desktop as the preferred digital consumer tool and chatbots have gained popularity because consumers across all ages and demographics use messaging as their primary communication medium.
“Chatbots conduct interactive, high-quality conversations that previously were the domain of human agents,” said Greg Johnsen, Chief Executive Officer of LifeLink. “By augmenting the key appointment request digital front door with conversational technology, Jefferson added exponential scale to their patient communications while simultaneously providing a simple, mobile-friendly solution for the appointment request process. The results show how strong patient preference has become for conversational technology.”
LifeLink’s proprietary technology platform enabled Jefferson to rapidly develop and deploy a number of A-B test scenarios between chatbots and online forms. As a result, the overall submission rate for appointment requests has improved by over 155%.
LifeLink chatbots went live in July 2019 and are available on the Jefferson website at https://appointments.jefferson.edu.