Kootenai | Kootenai Health | Issue 2, 2019

KH . ORG 17 There are certain things we do every year to stay healthy or prevent harm—checking our smoke detectors; getting our teeth cleaned; scheduling a wellness exam, mammogram or prostate exam; and more. With so much going on in our busy day-to-day lives, it can be hard to remember these less frequent tasks. Sometimes a helpful reminder is all we need. “We know that oftentimes the only barrier for patients in scheduling annual screenings is just taking the time to do it,” said Vivien Spyra, Kootenai Clinic Appointment Center manager. “With EMMI, we can automatically remind patients that they’re overdue for certain screenings and prompt them to schedule an appointment on the spot.” EMMI is an automated phone service currently being used by Kootenai Clinic Family Medicine and Kootenai Clinic Internal Medicine to remind patients of yearly screenings. The system informs patients they are overdue for a specific screening, can provide education about the screening, and can connect them directly to schedule an appointment. For clinic staff, the system provides updated statistics of results and other important metrics. It even calculates how much more time staff could spend with patients in the clinic rather than spending time to make phone calls. Apromising start “Last May we launched our first mammogram campaign and saw tremendous results,” Vivien said. “We weren’t sure how patients would react to automated calls, but we’ve seen a pretty positive response so far. I think they like getting the reminder, and being able to connect directly from that call to schedule an appointment is convenient.” The May mammogram campaign targeted 1,312 patients. Of those patients called, 676 patients engaged with the call (over 50 percent), and 88 transferred to schedule an appointment. Of those 88, three people were actually diagnosed with breast cancer. During this campaign, EMMI calculated that staff members saved an additional 24 hours that could be spent with patients simply by automating the reminder phone calls. “Our goal is to catch diseases like breast cancer, colon cancer or others early. Patients have better outcomes when they are treated earlier in the disease process,” Vivien said. “We were able to diagnose three people who may not have otherwise scheduled an appointment. Who knows how much further along it would have been before they noticed something was wrong and scheduled an appointment?” Expansion plans After seeing the success of the first campaign, Vivien is excited to expand the call reminders to other screenings. In addition to mammograms, annual wellness visits, and flu shots, Kootenai Clinic hopes to offer reminders for colorectal cancer screenings, well-child exams, and pneumococcal vaccines. “This is just one of the many ways we’re working to help our patients stay on top of their care,” Vivien said. “In the long term, tools like this will help our patients stay healthier longer.” 1,312 patients called; 676 (52%) reached Of the 676 patients engaged: 88 transferred to schedule (13%) 177 (26%) were given a phone number to schedule 3 patients were diagnosed with breast cancer Time saved by automating phone call reminders: 24.15 staff hours Mammogram Campaign by the Numbers