St. Luke’s delivers 360-degree patient view to access center agents with Microsoft Dynamics 365

St. Luke’s University Health Network (St. Luke’s) provides a range of healthcare services to its patients, including access centers with helpful agents. These access centers schedule appointments, answer questions, set up referrals, and route calls to the correct providers for patient convenience. To provide the best experience possible while enhancing the efficiency of its employees, St. Luke’s recognized a need to modernize and centralize its access center infrastructure. The health system wanted to provide patients with easier access to its services and give employees better visibility into patient data so they could provide support more quickly and increase patient satisfaction.

St. Luke’s planned a major digital transformation using Microsoft technology, and it started by deploying Microsoft Dynamics 365 in its access centers to connect patient data to its access center technology. By adopting several Microsoft tools, St. Luke’s has set itself up for continued success in its modernization. 

Improving patient management and support with Microsoft solutions

St. Luke’s is a nonprofit, fully integrated health network with more than 300 locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The organization’s access centers are key to connecting patients to the care that St. Luke’s offers, but tracking patients across multiple calls and teams used to be a time-consuming, manual process. Without a centralized view into that data, employees also found it distracting to search for patients’ details while on the phone. “We wanted a better view of each customer’s overall journey and satisfaction,” says Chad Brisendine, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of St. Luke’s.

The organization wanted to connect multiple services to its cloud infrastructure and build a modern customer relationship management (CRM) system to support patients seamlessly throughout their healthcare journeys. St. Luke’s had already been using Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft services and knew that Microsoft would provide valuable support. “Microsoft has been a strong enterprise partner for years, and we’ve had great success with the implementation of its products,” says Christine Brutschea, Associate CIO of St. Luke’s.

In 2018, the organization created a five-year digital transformation plan and chose to go all in with Microsoft. Later, when COVID-19 rapidly changed how people needed to receive healthcare, St. Luke’s saw even more clearly how Microsoft services could help it improve its access centers and offer a better view of patient journeys. In 2022, St. Luke’s used Microsoft FastTrack for support in streamlining and accelerating its cloud deployments. “Because we were working closely with the Microsoft team, we didn’t need a large internal team to get the core capabilities up and running,” says Brisendine.

By 2023, the health network set itself up to implement Microsoft technology for a variety of use cases. “We’re preparing to use Microsoft solutions for many capabilities, from data management and telecommunications to custom use cases,” says Brisendine. St. Luke’s has already deployed Microsoft Teams and more than 20 Microsoft Power BI apps for diverse workflows.

Elevating the healthcare experience for patients and access center employees using Dynamics 365

St. Luke’s is implementing Dynamics 365 in access centers across its network for case tracking, activity tracking, and appointment management. This will help its employees to quickly access and provide updates to electronic health records for patients who call. “We’re achieving a 360-degree patient view by using Dynamics 365 to access health data,” says Christopher Naylor, Director of the Development Team at St. Luke’s. With better visibility into the factors that affect a patient’s interaction, St. Luke’s can make calls as simple and convenient as possible.

St. Luke’s is also using the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare to find relevant data in Epic, a system for storing healthcare information. “Connecting Epic data to our CRM system is a huge undertaking, and we’ve used many Microsoft tools to accomplish that,” says Naylor. Using Dynamics 365 and Epic on Azure, St. Luke’s achieved real-time integration between Epic data and access centers. Now, it can focus on helping patients instead of managing infrastructure.

The organization has also incorporated the Twilio customer engagement platform to integrate data in the access center dashboards so that staff can deeply personalize each call. “Access center computers can recognize a patient’s phone number and automatically present their data in Dynamics 365 so that employees can see appointment information without having to search,” says Naylor. An employee can then set up an appointment and send notifications to the patient’s phone with one click.

Better visibility also makes it easier for employees to schedule and group patients’ appointments so that patients can make fewer trips to medical offices. “We’re making our access center agents as efficient as possible,” says Brisendine. “The transformation will help us achieve higher productivity and the best patient experience.” Meanwhile, the organization powers its front-end analytics interface using Power BI to better track cases and referral conversions. The new system will simplify tasks, like scheduling laboratory appointments, confirming responses from providers, and answering billing questions.

As a result of its ongoing modernizations, St. Luke’s hopes to increase patient engagement, satisfaction, and retention while making its health system simpler to navigate. The transformation is also informing the evolution of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare offerings. The collaboration between the teams at St. Luke’s and Microsoft is elevating these services so that other healthcare organizations find them even easier to implement and use. “Our transformation has moved rapidly,” says Naylor. “When you use Microsoft services, everything plays well together.”

Building a better healthcare journey by integrating data in the cloud

St. Luke’s has built the foundation of its long-term modernization plan using Microsoft technology. As it continues to improve efficiency and enhance its technology, the organization plans to increase the number of employees at its access centers from 300 to 1,000.

This project is already showing evidence of the kinds of significant improvements that St. Luke’s will be able to make for patients and employees on the Microsoft Cloud. “We understand the potential that this access center project has in our long-term transformation,” says Brisendine. “We have our foundation in place on Microsoft solutions, so we can really ramp up our efforts.”