The renowned Hospital Alemán in Buenos Aires, Argentina, stands as one of the most important and historic healthcare centers in the country, with over 150 years of existence, making it a benchmark in Argentinean healthcare. The hospital boasts more than 900 transplants, nearly 30 thousand annual hospitalizations, and its health plan has over 50 thousand affiliates.
Despite its rich history, the Hospital Alemán has not been immune to the challenges faced by healthcare systems worldwide, such as long waiting lists in various areas, low treatment adherence, and growing difficulties in contacting, scheduling, and confirming appointments, leading to a surge in absenteeism. This, in turn, posed problems for the quality of care, compelling them to find an efficient solution to address this significant challenge.
As narrated by Fabiana Fernández, Communications and Patient Services Manager, during the recent "Patient Experience 2.0" Conversation organized by ENIAX in Córdoba, "we had a high absenteeism percentage, and the curve was growing, and we knew we had to do something. It was necessary to implement a system that would allow us to increase efficiency in all processes related to scheduled medical appointments and, directly addressing absenteeism control."
According to the executive from the Hospital Alemán, they had to address several issues arising from high absenteeism, such as physicians' complaints about the low optimization of their schedules, the idle capacity caused by absenteeism in teams, appointment latency, delays in care, and consequently, the negative impact on the patient experience.
EMMA'S DEBUT AND THE DECLINE IN ABSENTEEISM
In the search for an efficient, technological, proven, easily integratable, and user-friendly solution for both users and medical staff, the Hospital Alemán found ENIAX.
"Absenteeism reached 27% in 2019. In 2022, there was a normalization of services, and we met ENIAX. The positive impact with ENIAX is that it wasn't a bot; we precisely didn't want that. We started implementing the service in June of that year, and in September, we activated our virtual assistant. From September to January, our absenteeism rate dropped by 7 points, which encouraged us to continue, and in 2023, we are already at a 12.7% absenteeism rate," commented Fabiana Fernández.
Achieving these results is the result of collaborative work between ENIAX and the Hospital to achieve proper integration and implementation, in a fluid exchange of data and information about appointment scheduling and the generation of regular user and patient queries, leading to the activation of the virtual assistant. The hospital team voted to name her Emma, registering her on the platforms and channels where interactions with patients would take place. Emma, dándola de alta en las plataformas y canales por donde se presentaría la interacción con los pacientes.
"We worked a lot on change management with the entire patient contact team at the hospital. We informed them that we would have a new member joining the team. We clarified that Emma was not here to take away jobs or automate processes but to provide services and improve the patient experience and our own because we began to find appointments where it was previously impossible, meaning we have fewer cancellations and higher attendance. Simultaneously, we started the process of integrating Emma with the doctors and medical services," said Fabiana Fernández, manager of the German Hospital.
In this way, all Emma's messages and use cases were crafted to recognize the usual communication channels of patients and send effective and efficient reminders. All of this was accompanied by an internal campaign introducing Emma to all teams.
During the first year with Emma, the Hospital Alemán focused on appointment reminders and confirmations. In mid-2023, they initiated the "Follow-up of the Absent Patient" service, with messages to raise awareness about the importance of unused appointments. Soon, they will activate "Appointment Cancellation," "Appointment Offering," and "Waiting List."
Fabiana Fernández concluded by stating, "We want the patient to feel that it is personalized attention, and Emma is so personalized that every time we meet with people from the patient contact, they always ask me if I am Emma."
