For the Better Podcast: Cedars-Sinai's breakout results with self-scheduling
Summary: Cedars-Sinai has adopted a more consumer-centric approach to healthcare, specifically implementing sophisticated self-scheduling tools. Christina Valls shares her insight into the challenges and strategies of bringing about this change, emphasizing the importance of empathizing with clinical operations, reducing patient friction, and utilizing data for continuous improvement.
Self-scheduling is a glimpse into the future of healthcare. By empowering patients with the ability to make their own appointments, healthcare becomes both more accessible and efficient.
Why it matters
Big retailers like Amazon, CVS, and Wal-Mart have long been harnessing technology to reduce friction in the buying process. Now consumers have come to expect these same experiences from their healthcare providers.
What's happening
Hospitals like Cedars-Sinai are leading the charge in consumer-centric scheduling technology. They saw the frustration patients felt with traditional scheduling and embraced self-scheduling as a solution.
Self-scheduling allows patients to make decisions about their care. Do they want to be seen sooner or do they want a particular doctor? The choice is in their hands without involving a call center
The results
Empowering users to make their own appointments isn't just convenient, it has a real impact on revenue and operations. After implementing self-scheduling, Cedars-Sinai saw real results:
57% increase in appointments — that's thousands of patients getting the care they need, faster.
41,000 fewer calls to call centers, making more agents available to those who need more help.
The expert insight
Adopting new technology and processes requires change management expertise. It's not enough to just integrate a tool, you must have buy-in across the organization for it to be truly successful.
Listen to the podcast and learn more
To hear more from Christina, and get a full picture of how Cedars-Sinai implemented self-scheduling, listen to the podcast on your favorite streaming service.
Listen to the episode: Cedars Sinai's breakout results with self-scheduling.