Champaign is known as the hub of Illinois’ Silicon Prairie, with many technology and healthcare companies. Christie Clinic, founded in 1929, is a vital and growing part of the region’s economy. We now feature more than 180 providers at 22 clinics in east-central Illinois.
My responsibilities at the clinic include strengthening Patient Engagement, and we’ve enjoyed tremendous success deepening patients’ involvement in their own healthcare. A side benefit has been helping providers and office staff find more minutes throughout the day for the many tasks that quality medicine demands.
Our partnership with eClinicalWorks has been one of the keys to our success. More than 120 of our providers are using healow Open Access®, which allows their patients to request or book appointments online. Patients love the convenience of 24/7 access to doctors’ schedules, and for our staff it’s easing the burden of answering phones and booking appointments.
Recently, for example, we booked 250 allergy appointments in just one month. And physicians are able to customize their schedules. One doctor, for example, uses Open Access to meet his goal of seeing 40 patients each day. Another, who recently gave birth to twins, used it to build breaks into her daily schedule.
We’re also making good use of the Patient Portal. We call it the MyCare Patient Portal, and set up an actual help desk, staffed each day, to help patients learn to get started and make full use of all it offers. Even members of our senior management team take turns staffing the desk, learning valuable lessons they can take back to their teams in order to improve the quality of care.
“I was helping out one of our managers at the desk recently, and a family new to Christie Clinic came in — mom, dad, and their four kids. We got all of them hooked up on the Portal. Mom downloaded the healow app, and now she and the whole family are using it. She was very, very excited to be able to have that access at her fingertips whenever she needed it.”
To me, experiences like that are among the most rewarding at our practice. It helps demonstrate that quality healthcare isn’t just about what goes on in the exam room, but is increasingly about how we engage patients, give them greater access to their records, and help them take a more active role in their own care.
In the end, that strategy is paying off in a better care experience for our patients, a healthier community, and a medical practice that enjoys the time it needs to meet the emerging challenges of healthcare today.
