How a QR Code Helped Mountain Park Health Center Adopt New Technology

Mountain Park Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving the Phoenix Metro area, cleverly used a QR code to help staff and patients adopt a new technology. Internal champions collaborated with their EHR partner, eClinicalWorks, to double the use of their new patient portal in just twelve months.

To find out more, Healthcare IT Today caught up with Amy Nunez, IT Director – Clinical Applications at Mountain Park Health Center (MPHC) at the eClnicalWorks’ Health Center Summit held in Boston, MA. The Health Center Summit is an event that is tailored specifically for eClinicalWorks’ community health and federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) customers.

MPHC has 10 clinics in the Phoenix Metro area and has been serving their community for over 40 years. They provide everything from primary care to pediatrics to dental, and mental health services. The 1,200 staff at MPHC handle over 400,000 patient encounters each year.

Success with Automated Appointment Reminders

FQHCs are federally funded non-profit health centers or clinics that serve medically underserved areas and populations. FQHCs provide care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.

With limited budgets, FQHCs must ensure they maximize the benefit of the technologies they deploy. They can ill afford to roll something out and have it sit unused by staff or patients.

That is approach that MPHC used when it deployed automated appointment reminders via text and voice. There initially was a concern that there would be limited uptake of this technology because of the cost of smartphones.

“When you are in our clinics and in our lobbies, you see patients Snap-chatting, using Instagram, and scrolling through Facebook,” said Nunez. “We realized that our patients already had access to smartphones and were active users. We also learned, by asking them, that they preferred texts because it made it easy for them to get the information from us.”

When MPHC rolled out this technology, not only did no-shows drop significantly, a majority of those who missed their appointment ended up rescheduling. One small change made a big difference. When MPHC initially deployed the automated text reminders, they did not include a link in the text for patients to rebook the appointment. As a result, only 40% were rebooking. When they added a link to the online booking system to the missed appointment notification, 61% rebooked – an impressive improvement.

Clever use of A QR Code for Portal Adoption

Many healthcare organizations struggle to get patients to log into their online portal to access health information and perform other health-related tasks. Portals can be difficult for patients to navigate on their own and staff do not usually remember how to get to the portal to even being to guide patients.

MPHC came up with a clever idea to use QR codes to address this challenge.

“During a brainstorming session, one of our medical students brought up the idea of using QR codes to point patients and staff to the portal,” shared Nunez. “They suggested putting the QR code on our ID badges and in the exam rooms. That way, whenever a staff member was with a patient, they could have them scan the QR code which would take them to the portal where they could book their next appointment or get other medical information.”

By making the QR code so prevalent, MPHC made it easy for staff and patients to access the portal technology. Furthermore, the QR was easy for staff to integrate into their interactions with patients.

However, just pointing patients to the portal wasn’t enough, MPHC also worked with their EHR partner, eClinicalWorks, to simplify the portal log-in experience.

Make Technology Easy for Patients

“eClinicalWorks really supported our efforts to make logging into the portal easy,” said Nunez. “We knew that if we went with the standard username + password to authenticate patients, we would run into a lot of issues. So we worked together with eClinicalWorks to offer different authentication options.”

Patient can, for example, authenticate using facial recognition or by using a PIN that is texted to the phone number on file.

The QR code coupled with the easier authentication helped increase portal usage at MPHC by 100%. They went from 18,000 patient users to over 36,000 in just 12 months.

“By focusing on the patient, rather than the technology, we are able to improve the quality of care that we provide,” concluded Nunez.

Watch the interview with Amy Nunez to learn:

• The secret to how MPHC got clinicians to adopt a way of communicating with patients
• The impact other industries are having on patient expectations
• What drives MPHC to continuously look at new ways to engage patients through technology

Learn more about Mountain Park Health Center at https://mountainparkhealth.org/

Learn more about eClinicalWorks at https://www.eclinicalworks.com/

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