UTMC Leverages Mobile to Deliver a Complete Patient Experience

Leaders at the University of Tennessee Medical Center (UTMC) are committed to offering and delivering innovative solutions to their community. But Michael Saad—Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and recent CIO of the Year ORBIE award winner for Tennessee—saw the unique frustrations patients and their families encountered in navigating UTMC campuses and sought to ease this pain point in the patient experience. 

Saad reviewed detailed patient feedback and interacted with the community to better understand where patients and their families struggled to find their way and the impact these difficulties had on the total care encounter. He then worked with the C-suite to develop a more robust solution.

CHALLENGE
With over 2.5M square feet of building structure, the sheer size of the UT campus made it difficult for patients to find their way to appointments—even with volunteer staff. Wayfinding was a pressing priority. However additional features, such as appointment management, remote health access, prescription refill, secure provider messaging and more were also needed. 

SOLUTION
UTMC wanted a robust mobile application to deliver the best in care services and support while reducing or eliminating friction points in the patient journey. 

Leaders from UTMC met with the team at Gozio Health to create a custom mobile solution that could offer wayfinding assistance and empower patients to take charge of their entire healthcare experience. Their efforts led to the development and deployment of a robust, comprehensive solution to meet patient needs and strengthen their impression of the health system. 

The UTMC Way app offers patients a host of features and abilities, including:

• Precision navigation to the UTMC campus and all facilities in the network
• Access to online scheduling and remote health services (eVisit)
• The ability to locate the closest UTMC urgent care center, with built-in navigation and hours of operation 
• “Find a Physician” functionality—by name or specialty
• Viewing lab results, often within 36 hours
• Reviewing clinical documents and records
• A portal to securely message providers—when the office responds, an email is sent alerting patients that there is a new message available in the portal
• Managing appointments
• Accessing medical history
• Managing insurance and paying medical center bills
• Connecting the app to Apple Health Management   
• Refilling prescriptions
• Searching for events and career opportunities
• Vehicle parking reminders 

Based on feedback from staff, the Gozio team created a private portal inside the app that allows staff members to access non-public location data, such as conference rooms for events and annual meetings. This has resulted in better attendance and a greater sense of community among UTMC team members.

RESULTS
Soon after debuting the UTMC Way app, UTMC recorded high levels of engagement. Patients and their families have downloaded the UTMC Way app over 32,000 times, with 244,000 total sessions completed. Wayfinding alone has assisted more than 54,000 patients. A deeper dive into the data shows:

• 61% are returning users 
• 33% have used the app four or more times
• 12% have accessed the app nine or more times

There is little doubt that efforts to deliver an exceptional patient experience from beginning to end with Gozio’s guidance and expertise continues to pay off. Today, the UTMC Way app empowers UTMC to provide the best possible care and service to its communities.

"As the region's academic medical center, innovation is one of our six values. We strive to provide the best healthcare experience possible for our patients," Saad says. "Through the use of the UTMC Way app, patients and their families can now navigate our campus using the latest wayfinding technology right on their phones. This allows patients to pinpoint exactly where they’ve parked and navigate to their appointment and safely back to their car, all while using turn-by-turn directions. Today, UTMC Way has become our main communication vehicle between our medical center and our patients.”

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