Executives at LifeStance Health Group Inc. (Nasdaq: LFST) tout a homegrown online reservation system as the initial response to a historic problem in health care.
Dubbed OBIE, short for Online Booking and Admitting Experience, the company’s new admissions process is part of the company’s broader strategy to streamline and modernize the patient experience.
Healthcare as a whole is plagued by poor customer service experiences at a time when other consumer sectors are seeking greater personalization. In a McKinsey & Co report, 1 in 4 consumers expressed frustration in their experience with the health care industry due to bad management encounters. such as programming.
The OBIE system is an amalgamation of existing software with a user interface built by LifeStance and a proprietary patient-provider matching algorithm, LifeStance chief digital officer Pablo Pantaleoni told Behavioral Health Business.
The patient-provider matching algorithm and user interface are at the core of OBIE and impact several ongoing clinical and commercial efforts at LifeStance. They will each benefit from having patients associate with a provider with whom they “fit.”
Incorporated in 2015, LifeStance is the nation’s largest outpatient mental health provider with 5,226 physicians. Provides care in a hybrid model, utilizing telehealth and in-person appointments. It is also under new leadership.
“Patients come to LifeStance because they want support and they want to connect with someone who can really understand them,” Pantaleoni said. “On the other side of the coin, we have physicians who come to LifeStance because of the added value of our platform, including the ability to focus on the care they want to provide.”
On the business side, LifeStance leadership said in its latest earnings call that it is looking to drive higher productivity at the clinic level. Specifically, the company seeks to improve conversion rates through all parts of the “patient funnel” with better operational discipline. This way, it can take full advantage of the overwhelming demand for mental health services, LifeStance president and COO Danish Qureshi said in the company’s second-quarter report. earnings call.
OBIE features in the “middle” and “bottom” of the funnel.
In between, better patient matching and scheduling is meant to take full advantage of the company’s provider profiling system; to reduce programming complexity and open up provider capacity.
At its heart, OBIE is meant to reduce cancellations and no-shows. LifeStance has a consistent 15% churn rate companywide, Qureshi said on the call.
Cancellation rates improve “significantly” in states where OBIE is live, Qureshi told BHB. OBIE first launched in Ohio earlier this year and is expected to be available in 14 states by the end of the third quarter.
LifeStance operates in 32 states.
On the provider side, LifeStance seeks to improve your supplier retention rates. The company has made several moves on this front. This includes creating a stock reward program for qualified providers. LifeStance is also pairing OBIE with more frontline staff to help with booking and billing issues to take more administrative burden off providers.
“It’s about reducing friction and stress in the process of seeking care or being able to meet patients and provide care,” Qureshi told BHB.
This also includes addressing the “burden of gathering information in advance” with new patients, Pantaleoni said. This, in turn, can help get people to serve faster and reduce the administrative burden on LifeStance staff.
How OBIE was made and what else it can do
LifeStance interviewed hundreds of patients, physicians, and staff about booking and matching physicians. These included interviews with users of other matchmaking tools.
Those interviews served as the basis for the parameters that would shape the algorithm. The main parameter was to respect the workflows and the preferences of the providers.
While Pantaleoni did not elaborate, he said the algorithm was developed internally based on data the company has aggregated.
Because OBIE is itself a digital tool, its performance can also be objectively evaluated.
“With the way this algorithm was built, we are in continual improvement as we continue to roll it out to make sure we adhere to standardization and other criteria across the company,” Pantaleoni said. “But at the same time, it is extremely flexible to adapt to the needs of both patients and physicians.”
LifeStance also hopes to learn more about patient care-seeking patterns and physician preferences early in the journey for both parties.
LifeStance already tracks patient outcomes through a unified electronic health record and outcomes tracking platform to inform care decisions, according to the company’s latest annual financial filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. . But Qureshi said that OBIE will also influence care outcomes.
“If you can match a patient with a specific diagnosis and match them with a doctor who is perfectly prepared, trained and wants to treat that diagnosis, that [improves] results,” Qureshi said.
What is at stake
Globally, healthcare providers have some of the worst customer satisfaction scores of any industry. Hospitals have the fourth worst score, while outpatient care providers (a category that includes mental health providers) rank 14th from the bottom of 47 industries ranked by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
As many as two-thirds of patients say they have had negative health care experiences with inefficient office visits as the most common reason, according to a poll by professional services firm Accenture.
The same survey found that the two most important aspects of a positive experience were a provider who explained things clearly and a provider who listened to needs, understood, and gave the appropriate emotional response.
“From outside of LifeStance, the idea is that you randomly call lists of providers in the hope that someone answers the phone and is willing to book it and you can pay,” Qureshi said. “If you show up for that appointment and it’s not a good fit and you have to start all over again at the beginning of that process… We can all know intuitively that that’s a very demoralizing path for a patient who is already having great success. difficult decision in the first place.”
Pantaleoni added that the company found that most people don’t even try to restart the process, “which is sad and scary at the same time.”
