Tarun Kapoor, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Virtua Health, sees patients not just as receivers of care but as active partners in their healthcare journey. To him, true patient empowerment means more than meeting requests—it’s about proactively understanding patient needs. 

Traditionally, patients were left on the sidelines, overloaded with information.“The goal is not just a transformative solution, but a mechanism where patients can be empowered,” emphasized Dr. Kapoor. His approach at Virtua Health centers on collaborating with patients as active participants in their care, because engaging patients directly leads to better outcomes for both the patient and the organization.

Empowering patients through consumer choice 

“I’ve heard some people say patients are less loyal these days. The way I look at it, you can’t assume people were previously loyal if they didn’t previously have choices,” said Kapoor.

“Today’s patients have choices and they’re exercising those choices, which now makes them consumers. Health systems need to think more like retailers in meeting patient needs with just-in-time information through convenient modalities (like SMS), and that’s where we are having great success with Luma,” said Kapoor. 

Empowering patients through personal customization

Through partnering with Luma, the Virtua Health team ensures patients receive tailored, relevant information before appointments. Automated appointment reminders engage patients in a friendly and accessible way, making healthcare feel less intimidating.This personal touch has streamlined visits and empowered patients with important knowledge about their health.

With now a 79.34% appointment confirmation rate, partnering with Luma has changed how Virtua Health optimizes appointments, making patient engagement efficient and impactful.

Empowering patients through larger system change

Dr. Kapoor advocates for patients playing an active and informed role in their care decisions, but the first move must be made by the larger healthcare industry: “Patients will not be able to empower themselves unless we create mechanisms to challenge our current system and ask ourselves, are we creating an ecosystem where patients can be empowered?” 

Fostering this kind of active patient participation is not just the future of healthcare – it’s the present, and it’s a journey that Virtua Health, with the help of partners like Luma, is eagerly embracing.

This blog was written based on Tarun Kapoor’s 2023 Lumanate keynote presentation. Watch it here.

With Luma now tightly integrated with Greenway Health, millions more patients will more easily access care, prepare for their appointments, and communicate with their providers

Luma is built on the core idea that it should be easier for patients to get to care, and the newly announced partnership between Greenway Health and Luma makes that possible for millions more patients across the United States. 

For patients to be successful, they need to:

1. Access care more easily.
2. Easily communicate with their providers.
3. Be ready for care before their visit.

With Luma integrated directly into the Greenway Health EHRs as the native patient engagement solution, patients can self-service, with every action updating the patient’s record in Greenway. This puts the patient at the center and gets them what they need – without additional burden for staff. 

It supports these three pillars that make patients more successful and ultimately creates the positive consumer experience they expect. 

Here’s how the Luma-Greenway partnership supports the 3 pillars of patient success.

1. Access Care Easily

Access when and where patients want it

Patients expect more options than a phone call to access care, and research shows that they love having self-service options. Patients will even choose a provider based on whether they can self-schedule or change appointments without calling.

Greenway Patient Connect powered by Luma lets them:

• Schedule online (website, chatbot, portal, etc.)
• Cancel and reschedule appointments by text message 
• Know when they’ve been referred to a specialist and get instructions for scheduling

24/7 access 

We’ve heard from countless organizations that they want to do more to improve patient access, but don’t have any more staff time to devote to it. They need to do more than ever before to gain and retain patients, with less staff effort.

Luma + Greenway lets patients take action 24/7, integrated directly with their patient record. It means no double-documentation for staff or manually filling open times. 

Instead, open times are automatically filled with offers to the right patients based on their appointment needs. Staff simply see fuller schedules in Greenway. For example, at DMOS Orthopaedic Centers, dozens of patients per day booked appointments online in the first full month with Luma.

2. Communicate with Providers

Patient-to-Provider

For patients to be successful without long wait times on hold, they need an easy way to contact their providers with questions. 

Luma enables secure staff-patient chat and allows patients to initiate by text or chatbot to get the answers they need. And if they’re on the phone and can’t wait for a staff member, they can receive a text instead to complete actions like rescheduling an appointment. 

Provider-to-Patient

To help staff communicate with patients more efficiently, they have options in Greenway Patient Connect powered by Luma:

• One-to-many broadcast messaging for important updates like weather closures (helping avoid long hours trying to get in touch with many patients)
• Web messaging from staff goes to text messages for patients (convenient for both parties)
• Web-to-chat messaging to respond to patients who ask a question via chatbot on their provider’s website

3. Be Ready for Care

Clear next steps

Reminders directly to patients with the next steps they need to know help reduce no-shows and create a better experience for patients. 

Reminders from Greenway Patient Connect powered by Luma are driven by the schedule in Greenway and automatically let patients know when to arrive for their appointments, whether they have forms to complete, and more. Patients are more prepared for their appointments, without staff investing in manual calls down a list.

Easy, EHR-integrated actions

Instead of simply engaging patients by text and leaving next steps for in person or over the phone, Greenway Patient Connect powered by Luma lets patients take the next step themselves. It creates the self-service, simple consumer experience that patients have grown to expect. 

For example, they can:

• Complete intake forms including new patient forms, authorizations, and more
• Upload a driver’s license
• Let staff know when they have arrived 

These actions update the Greenway EHRs directly, allowing patients to actively partner in their healthcare journeys and ensuring staff members have one source of truth.

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We couldn’t be more excited for the efficient, simple consumer experience patients will have access to with the Luma-Greenway partnership on Greenway Patient Connect powered by Luma. Simplifying these everyday interactions, providing self-service options, and removing friction from the healthcare experience are the true opportunities for innovation in healthcare right now. This partnership will improve the healthcare journeys of millions of patients across the United States with these pillars of patient success.

When Michelle Winfield-Hanrahan took the helm as Clinical Chief Access Officer & Associate Vice Chancellor of Access at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in February of 2021, her mission was clear: find a patient engagement platform that supports the institution’s vision. While many platforms offered text messaging solutions, Michelle found Luma Health to be unique in their approach. “Luma really understood what we were looking for and they were willing to partner with us to determine the best fit for our organization,” emphasized Michelle.

One of the main issues Luma addressed for UAMS was the need for patients to effectively reschedule their appointments. Patients who canceled appointments often struggled to find a convenient time for rescheduling, resulting in gaps in needed care, longer wait times, and increased manual work for staff. These challenges ultimately affected the continuity and quality of patient care.

The Journey to Boardroom Buy-In

For Michelle, obtaining buy-in from the organization’s key stakeholders and senior leadership was a crucial milestone. As a new executive at UAMS, she faced the challenge of gaining support to invest in Luma. This milestone wasn’t just about getting approval for Luma; it was also a chance to improve the way UAMS delivers healthcare. Getting stakeholder support not only validated her vision but it also marked a turning point in modernizing UAMS’s healthcare delivery to meet the ever-changing needs of patients and staff.

Here’s Michelle’s blueprint for boardroom buy-in: 

1. Align with Organizational Goals

Initiatives should focus and align with the goals of the strategic organization, such as delivering positive patient outcomes and satisfaction. Michelle shared with stakeholders that embracing technology like Luma could reduce patient no-shows, streamline workflows, and improve patient experience. “We didn’t want to lose revenue or compromise patient care, so this became a strategic initiative,” she explained.

2. Create Momentum Across Departments

Positive buy-in from one department can lead to interest in adopting the technology from other departments, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and cross-team collaboration. “Once we saw the success of the texting capability and rescheduling in one department, it sparked interest from others. They saw how we were solving our problems, and other departments started reaching out, asking if we can implement this in their areas. We’re quickly rolling it out to the next service lines,” Michelle mentioned.

3. Showcase Progress and Impact

It is important to ensure that the tool’s impact across different areas plays a role in delivering excellent patient care, streamlining administrative tasks, and keeping operations running smoothly. To show how it affects patient care and operational efficiency, this involves using detailed data reports.

“Luma’s ability to show us everything that we’re doing from their reporting capability has been instrumental in getting better patient communication moving throughout the organization,” Michelle notes.

These reports help put actionable insights into perspective in order to make improvements in daily operations. From reducing the number of canceled appointments to ensuring patients are seen on time and maintaining patient satisfaction—these reports highlight the important role Luma’s suite of solutions plays in improving patient care. 

Transforming Healthcare Together

Michelle’s success at UAMS is the story of healthcare evolution: how technology and collaboration can shape patient success. Partnering with Luma Health can help organizations like UAMS usher in a new era where patients can actively participate in their own healthcare journey.

Interview based on October 25, 2023 Patient Access Collaborative webinar featuring Luma Health and Michelle Winfield-Hanrahan of UAMS.

This year at Lumanate 2023, we centered around patient empowerment and partnership. Why this theme? Why now? 

We know that the healthcare delivery landscape continues to increase in complexity – where patients (i.e. the customer) are seeking a great health outcome, alongside a stellar consumer experience.

Competition is further amplifying this challenge – patients (i.e. the customer) have far more options to choose from, be it a similar clinic down the street, retail care options like CVS Minute Clinic, or a virtual care option on their phone.

Given the numerous paths to achieving a patient’s desired health outcome, delivering a stellar consumer experience is critical – patients want to play a part in managing their healthcare journey.

Recent research shows that it is a key consideration in their choice of providers. 

• Patients are 34% more likely to reschedule canceled appointments if they can do so directly from SMS. Luma Bedrock™, based on 8 years of data from 650+ healthcare organizations.

• “The benefits of self-scheduling from the patients’ perspective—satisfaction, time, convenience, and engagement—were increasingly referred to as potential rewards…obstacles [may] have historically been organizations’ perceptions…Despite the lack of evidence-based barriers, use of self-scheduling has continued to be reported at low rates.” Journal of Internet Medical Research 24(1): Jan 11, 2022. 

• “Patients see great potential in the ability to self-schedule appointments and request prescription refills, yet these areas are where provider investment and vendor delivery fall the most short of patient expectations. [When]asked what they most value in choosing a provider organization…patients are placing increased focus on provider organizations’ digital access tools.” “Patient Perspectives on Patient Engagement Technology 2022,” KLAS Research.

Patients are often an underutilized resource. However, when empowered, patients take manual work away from staff and – unlike staff – a patient’s self-service efforts are scalable. 

This strategy doesn’t require ‘more technology’ – rather, successful healthcare delivery organizations have focused on framing technology, workflows, and staffing trade-offs with a clear focus on ‘what’s the right thing to do for our customer/patient?”.

Here are three guiding principles we’ve found to be critical in empowering patients: 

Don’t rely on the “digital front door” alone 

The patient journey extends before and after the front door (and don’t forget that some folks like using the garage door or side door).

 Think digital-first, but not digital-only

Patients want an omni-channel experience (i.e. meet them where they are, and pick right back up where they left off) – that’s not one-size-fits-all.

Look for “hidden” pitfalls to  patient success

Areas where patients might have trouble reaching you or getting what they need. 

It’s time to empower patients. Let’s get started together! 

Want more Lumanate 2023 content, including a recording of Adnan Iqbal’s kickoff? Visit lumahealth.io/lumanate

With hours of manual outbound calls on their plates and phones ringing off the hook, many organizations using MEDITECH are looking for ways to stretch their limited staff farther to create the best-in-region experience that will continue to differentiate their brand. 

Imagine if your own organization had hours more time for each staff member to provide a truly concierge-level experience to your patients – ensuring they were up to date on preventive care appointments, checking in after procedures, providing resources to patients who needed financial, language, or other support, and much more. 

These Luma customers have integrated automated and self-service actions using Luma directly into their MEDITECH systems to take manual work off of their staff’s plates and enable a better experience for both patients and staff.

Northfield Hospital + Clinics

At Northfield Hospital + Clinics, “we’re like David between two Goliaths,” said Vern Lougheed, Director of IT. Northfield is located in rural Minnesota, and competes for patients who also have the option to visit large health systems in the Twin Cities like Mayo Clinic. 

Northfield chose Luma to power its patient experience initiatives by integrating directly with MEDITECH via APIs. The resulting efficiency helps Northfield stand out: “Our goal is to provide easy access to our organization anywhere a patient wants it,” said Debbie Oathoudt, IT Program Manager.
Before Luma, Northfield staff manually called each patient for appointment reminders, totaling 150-200 daily calls per FTE. Now, with reminders that are automatically sent to patients with appointments scheduled in MEDITECH, Northfield saves 80 hours in reminder calls every month. The reminders have also helped decrease no-shows by 15%.

Phelps Memorial Health Center

For Phelps Memorial Health Center, where many patients travel long distances to get to care, better staff efficiency and more patient convenience have a direct impact on patient outcomes. 

API integration with MEDITECH helps Phelps Memorial patients prepare for visits ahead of time by:

• Self-scheduling their own visits directly into MEDITECH Expanse.
• Responding to reminders that are automatically sent based on their upcoming appointments in the MEDITECH schedule.
• Completing intake forms online that are sent back to MEDITECH Expanse before the visit.

Self-service and digital options have been “so well received at Phelps Memorial” by both patients and staff, says Director of EHR Kurt Schmidt. 84% of patients who receive intake forms from Luma complete them ahead of their appointment, and “different departments come to me and ask how they can implement Luma into their workflows,” Kurt said. Phelps Memorial reaches more than 98% of their patient population using Luma. 

Get Outcomes Like These

Northfield Hospital + Clinics and Phelps Memorial Health Center show the power of giving scheduled patients actionable next steps. Not only does this help patients remember and prepare for their appointments, but allowing patients to self-service takes hours of work off of your staff. What’s more, data from KLAS Research shows that patients want self-service options and will even select a provider based on available digital offerings. 

If you’re interested in the possibilities of integrating options like these with MEDITECH, book a quick call with a Luma + MEDITECH expert.:

• Patient self-scheduling
• Actionable reminders that allow patients to cancel and reschedule their appointments and join an automated waitlist 
• Automatic offers to switch to text message for patients waiting on hold 
• Automated requests for patients to confirm appointments, complete forms, and more

Digital front door. Before 2020, this phrase was relatively obscure in the healthcare landscape, jumping to the collective forefront when the COVID-19 pandemic drove providers to adapt quickly to digital care options. Three years later, the digital front door is here to stay, promising to: 

• Reduce administrative burden
• Increase mobile and/or portal engagement
• Reduce no-show-rate/more appointments filled
• Increase patient satisfaction/convenience

Digital front doors (DFDs) can be best defined as a digital platform with one or more of the following features: a portal, mobile app, provider directory, symptom checker, or patient scheduling. 

When a DFD works well, it seamlessly connects your communication, outreach, scheduling, and patient information, working in the background while your team provides in-person care. 

But what happens when a DFD strategy falls short?  Luma’s team of product experts share how to analyze your DFD experience, identify the areas for improvement, and move forward towards greater patient success.

Step 1: How to Identify Broken Digital Front Doors

According to the United States Government Accountability Office, 90% of organizations reported offering a patient portal, but only about a third of patients use them. When you’re doing everything “right,” but still lack patient connection, it can be frustrating to troubleshoot yet another solution. 

When a DFD is broken, you may experience:

The Trap Door: Trap doors bring patients in, then let them fall through the floor, resulting in patient frustration and need for additional, resource-consuming follow-up. Typically, the trap door is not a full platform experience. Instead, if this sounds like your organization, you might be using point solutions such as:

• Appointment request forms
• Chat-only bots
• Booking without screening/registration

The Side Door:  Side doors occur when patients try to get in touch differently than the organization prefers, creating uncontrolled costs, overworked staff, and a fragmented patient experience. You might have a side door issue at your organization if you have:

• High volumes of phone calls
• Disconnected messaging tools
• Inappropriate patient self-triage

The Rusted Door: Rusted doors occur when getting through the digital front door is too difficult for patients, resulting in low adoption and the organizational belief that patients don’t want or need digital tools. If this sounds like your organization, you might have: 

• Outdated patient portals
• Mobile-unfriendly UIs
• Complicated scheduling processes

Step 2: How to Mend your Broken DFD

Broken digital front doors create frustrating bottlenecks for patients and staff, resulting in lower adoption of digital tools and a reliance on human capital to smooth the gaps. With healthcare staff reporting higher levels of burnout and sky-rocketing operating costs, you need solutions that work quickly, efficiently, and effectively. 

Here are four solutions for mending a broken system, plus discussion questions to prompt further action: 

Ensure Omnichannel Scheduling is available for every context

Different patients use different channels. Meeting, guiding, and transitioning from one channel to the next is the difference between a digital dead end and a seamless experience.

Luma Solution: Patient Self-Scheduling

Digging Deeper:

• How well do your current scheduling tools match the channels patients want to use?
• Where might patients experience unintended bottlenecks? (Trap, Side & Rusted Doors)
• What’s the right balance between self-triage and too many qualifying questions?

Simplify appointment management workflows

Life happens at the last minute. Making it easy for patients to cancel and reschedule while letting other patients know an earlier time is available creates two five-star reviews. 

Luma Solution: Smart Waitlist

Digging Deeper:

• How much time does your current workflow need to recover canceled appointments?
• Are you letting patients take action from the messages you send them?
• If a patient has a question about their appointment, are you making it easy and fast to ask?

Increase intake ease and efficiency using digital options

Starting on the right track shouldn’t be a pain. Collecting necessary info up front means no wasted time for patients and providers – making it digital means fewer errors and potential back and forth. 

Luma Solution: Intake Forms

Digging Deeper:

• How seamless do you make going from a booked appointment action to digital intake? Are some channels lacking?
• Are you asking the patient to do work that you should be able to streamline?

Prepare in advance for patient customization

Each appointment type and patient have their nuances. Helping the patient complete tasks and follow important directions before their appointment increases the value for both the patient and the provider. 

Luma Solution: Appointment Reminders

Digging Deeper: 

• How do you get visibility into our patients’ preparedness so the care team knows what to expect?
• What pre-appointment education could create a deeper discussion between patient and provider?
• Can the patient communicate with your team about their specific appointment ahead of time with minimal friction?

Step 3: Further Resources

Our Luma product experts share solutions for fixing broken DFDs in this timely webinar. Or schedule a 1:1 consultation with a Luma product expert today.

The statistics are unavoidable–the United States faces a healthcare talent shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034 according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. According to a recent Definitive Healthcare report, since 2020, one in five healthcare workers have quit their jobs, suggesting “up to 47% of healthcare workers plan to leave their positions by 2025.” 

Recently, the Luma Health team met with Dr. Dan Vicencio, interim Chief Medical Officer and practicing physician at Near North Health, to learn more about how the Chicago-area FQHC system is navigating the current healthcare staffing shortage while maintaining mission-critical care. 

Luma Health: Near North has a mission to provide “culturally competent care.” What does that look like in practice? 

Dr. Dan Vicencio: To provide culturally competent care, we have a diverse staff, because it is important to have our care team and staff represent the community we serve. Second thing is to have information in multiple languages wherever possible. We have well over fifteen languages that we speak in the course of a given day with patients across Chicago – everything from Polish on the West Side, to Spanish, which is all over the city, to West African languages here in the South Side. 

LH: The state of Illinois’ official COVID-19 public health emergency status is officially ending next month, May 2023. What challenges are you facing post-pandemic?

DV: We are looking at getting a lot of our patients back into care. COVID-19 really disconnected us from our patients, and so we’re using many different avenues to get patients back into a system of care that they can trust and access readily. We find that a lot of our patients have been using telephones as their main mode of information. Letters are a thing of the past now.

Luma Health is one of the things that we’ve been using to get them back into care. The ability to reach all our patients on their phones is increasingly more important. 

LH: How have post-pandemic staffing shortages impacted Near North? 

DV: A good number of providers did not return to medicine after COVID because of burnout or not being in a place where they felt comfortable applying their trade as a healer. 

We as a healthcare system must find avenues to provide providers and staff with the time to just do what they do best, which is evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients.

We are trying to create that environment to better support providers and staff.  

LH: Does Luma help create that environment? 

DV: ​​Luma definitely helps address some of the staffing shortages that we’ve experienced. Not only does it help cut down on the amount of calls that go to our call center, but our patients now have access to reschedule and cancel those appointments any time of day. So instead of calling us after hours and getting a call center, they actually can get a text and a link from us to schedule.

In the old days, we would’ve had one person making phone call after phone call to reach patients. Now, Luma can reach out to a whole group of patients and give them the same message. And that consistent messaging is key, especially for attribution lists or gaps in care follow-ups. You don’t have that potential off-script variation in message that you would get with a person making manual calls.

Luma makes it as simple as possible to get our points across. The provider has another avenue to automatically reach the patient with important reminders like, “Hey, you need to come back for your three month checkup,” or “You need to make sure that you get your appropriate preventive care screenings.”

LH: What’s another Luma solution that has helped make life easier for your staff? 

DV: Broadcast! This is Chicago. We get a foot of snow sometimes.  With Luma, we can immediately reach out to staff and patients with weather closure information to keep everyone safe.  

Are you an FQHC interested in learning how Luma’s Patient Success Platform might integrate into your workflows? Schedule a 1:1 with a Luma squad member here. 

At Houston ENT & Allergy, CEO Chuck Leider is committed to using technology to improve the experience for both patients and staff. Using Luma integrated with their NextGen EHR, Chuck and his staff get more patients in the door, provide a white-glove experience, and automate manual tasks – all creating revenue savings of $1.2 million in filled appointments, $1.8 million annually in prevented no-shows, and $575,000 in scheduled referrals.

At a Luma community summit for NextGen EHR users, Chuck shared insights that help Houston ENT & Allergy create success for patients, staff, and the system. Here are 3 things he’s focused on: 

Solving for Patients’ Pain Points and Feedback 

The digital patient experience journey at Houston ENT & Allergy began, fittingly, with patients’ insights. 

After years of manual phone calls to remind patients about their appointments, then an automated voice reminder system, Chuck and his colleagues wondered why no-shows weren’t going down. Revenue was majorly impacted by no-shows, and providers were frustrated that they weren’t seeing as many patients as they could be. 

To get to the bottom of the issue, Houston ENT & Allergy interviewed 65 patients about their experiences. 

“We thought our system was highly effective. But patients were telling us that the calls came through and they didn’t pick them up. Sometimes, they didn’t recognize the number – we have a number of clinics, and they often didn’t realize we were calling about their appointments. At other times, they couldn’t take a phone call because they were in a meeting, for example.”

Houston ENT and Allergy also has a large geriatric population that reported issues hearing the message in an automated call. 

With patients’ feedback, Chuck and his team realized they needed a solution that would meet the specific needs their patients pointed out. After moving to text-first appointment reminders with Luma, Chuck calculated that a 9% reduction in no-show rates saves Houston ENT & Allergy $1.8 million in annual revenue. 

“Looking at the reasons our patients are having trouble getting to us, and making things simpler for them, has created huge value for our patients. Hearing from them directly has paid off,” said Chuck

Streamlining the Solutions Staff Need to Learn and Maintain

As Houston ENT & Allergy has grown, their tech stack has, too. Now, Chuck is focused on eliminating redundant systems to make staff’s days simpler. 

“With several different platforms, it gets very hard to train people. They’re having to master the EHR and multiple other technologies, and it’s challenging,” Chuck said. “Especially if the staff are patient-facing, navigating these systems can interfere with the white-glove experience we want to provide.” 

Looking for ways to pare down systems where possible – especially when the system performs a single function – has made Houston ENT & Allergy’s day-to-day operations more efficient, and helps avoid training and re-training on many different systems.

Eliminating unnecessary technology has the additional benefit of saving money, Chuck pointed out. 

“We chose to layer in Luma to request feedback after appointments, instead of using a separate system. And just getting rid of that additional system saves us $2,500 a month. With budget constraints, containing those costs makes a difference.” 

Automating a Great Experience and Removing Manual Tasks

Like other healthcare organizations, Houston ENT & Allergy is struggling with staff shortages but committed to providing a great experience that keeps patients coming back. According to Chuck, self-scheduling and customizing automated reminders are key to this balance. 

“It is harder for us to compete for limited staff, so we look at technology to take on manual tasks,” he said. 

Instead of staff “constantly monitoring the phones or on the computer personalizing each message,” reminders integrated with NextGen are automatically personalized based on each patient’s personal information, provider, appointment, and more. From scheduling referrals alone, Houston ENT & Allergy has gained $575,000 in scheduled referrals. 

An automated waitlist has provided some of the biggest value to Houston ENT & Allergy. Now, instead of staff answering calls from patients who need to cancel, then reaching out manually to patients who might be able to take the appointment slot, both the cancellations and the waitlist offers are automated. 

“We’ve saved over 1.2 million because of Luma’s Smart Waitlist,” Chuck said.

Finally, Chuck encourages other organizations to offer self-scheduling online. It helps reduce phone calls and follow-up, but even more importantly gives patients better access to Houston ENT & Allergy. 

“We get great feedback from patients that come in and say how easy it was to get in with self-scheduling. Maybe their kid had an earache in the night, and they can find us online and book an appointment for nine o’clock the next day,” he said. 

“Our website is open 24/7. Over the holidays, I saw so many patients booking appointments.” 

Interested in using Luma + NextGen to see value like Houston ENT & Allergy? Contact us to learn more. 

Federally qualified health centers, or FQHCs, make up a core part of the United States’ healthcare landscape, as more than 1,400 currently provide care.

While these organizations serve different regions and patient populations, they all have one thing in common  – the need to reach patients quickly and efficiently, no matter where they are in their journey, what language they speak, or what communication channel they prefer. 

To consistently reach more patients and keep those patients healthier, FQHCs are automating their outreach and removing the burden of manual calls from their staff. 

Here’s how FQHCs use Luma to amplify their reach: 

At Cook County Health, a Chicago-based FQHC serving the second-largest county in the United States, the team needed a consistent method to reach their vast patient population. Since partnering with Luma, CCH has sent over 4.9 million appointment reminders to bring patients in for important vaccinations. “We need a partner that can handle whatever we throw their way. Luma always delivers – whether that’s deep scheduling integrating into Cerner, scalable vaccine operations, patient outreach, or flexible messaging capabilities,” Adam Weber, Executive Director of Operations and Support Services

As the only health center in a 20-mile radius, Alexander Valley Healthcare in Cloverdale, California often has a lengthy attribution list to nurture. Before, referred patients could miss out on preventive screenings or other needed care. With Luma, AVH automated their attribution list outreach, reminding new patients of due care and helping them schedule. Alexander Valley Health scheduled 30% more preventive screenings, with 38% more attributed patients receiving care.

For Ryan Health, which serves patients throughout Manhattan, multilingual messaging has helped amplify communication across their diverse patient population. Using Luma, Ryan Health reaches patients in over 35 different languages.“Luma helps us extend our reach to our neighbors and serve even more people,” said Sam Bartels, executive director of Ryan Health’s mobile, West 97th Street, and Wadsworth locations.

Virginia’s GPW Health Center needed a more efficient way of managing patient communication. Their team was overwhelmed with manual processes, such as calling patients back to reschedule appointments and sending paper mailers to reach patients with details like referrals or test results. Switching to patient self-scheduling and automated reminders significantly reduced the volume of inbound calls and the need for a dedicated team to confirm appointments. Patient engagement has increased by 70%, while no-show appointments decreased by 11%. 

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo today! 

The previous norms for earning and keeping patients have shifted dramatically, as outpatient volumes continue to be lower post-pandemic. Staying competitive often means getting creative to not only reduce costs – which can only be reduced so far – but doing more with your existing resources.

Luma helps your team get more results from the efforts you already implement, helping you contain costs and grow revenue. 

Here are innovative ways that peers from the Luma community are containing costs: 

1. Free up resources, then repurpose 
   • Instead of patients filling out forms in the office, Seaview Orthopedics, located in Ocean, New Jersey, implemented an automated intake process using Luma reminders. Patients are sent their intake forms via text before their visit, saving time and removing the manual process for staff. “I never thought that intake forms could be an easy process, especially because there are so many complexities in orthopedics,” said Christina Flaherty, Seaview’s Director of Project Management, “With Luma, we now can focus on next-level growth.”The Seaview team converted the now-empty waiting room space into additional physical therapy rooms, and in just five months, they earned over $765,000 ROI from increased patient volumes. 
2. Evaluate the downstream effects of a pay-per-message strategy
   • At Specialists in General Surgery in Minnesota, 3-5 full-time staff manually called patients each day to remind them of appointments or pre-op instructions. Their pay-per-message vendor made it costly to remind patients via text, which led to the necessity of daily calls. After making the switch to Luma and using text reminders instead of calls, they started saving over 20 hours of staff time each week. “Luma takes an incredible lift off our team by giving them more time to focus on patients instead of reminder calls. I didn’t realize just how much of a tremendous employee morale booster Luma would be,” said Anita Caskey, Chief Administrative Officer, Specialists in General Surgery.
3. Look for automation opportunities to save patients and staff time
   • Like Specialists in General Surgery, CommuniCare, an FQHC in San Antonio, Texas, now automates text reminders before appointments to let patients – and staff – skip the phone calls. In two months, more than half of their patients opted to confirm their appointments via text. The convenience of texting over calling is what patients expect, according to Sean Adams, VP, Chief Performance & Innovation Officer for CommuniCare. With Luma, CommuniCare saved over 3,000 hours of staff time in reminder calls, valued at $41,500 saved per month.  
4. Utilize existing schedule spots to improve outcomes and drive revenue
   • GPW Health Center, located in Manassas, VA, gained an additional $30,000 in seven months from filling open appointments using automated waitlist offers.  Previously, when patients would cancel at the last minute, those appointments would stay empty, creating a loss of expected revenue for GPW.  Now, patients who need care sooner get Luma text message offers integrated with the eClinicalWorks EHR. Schedules stay full and patients are being seen sooner, without additional manual work from GPW’s staff. 

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OrthoNebraska is an innovator in orthopedic care, but accessing that care was challenging for patients. OrthoNebraska’s leaders knew they wanted to completely overhaul the patient experience and create a unified digital front door – not just look for a quick fix. 

“We wanted a great consumer journey to deliver ease of access as well as quality care,” said Nikki Green, senior manager of patient access. “But we didn’t want to select a vendor that would create redundancy or be unable to scale with us as we grew.” 

The first challenge to tackle: high no-show rates. Instead of requiring patients to call to change their appointments, which led to no-shows and thousands in lost revenue, OrthoNebraska envisioned becoming the first orthopedic practice in the region to offer self-scheduling. 

Because OrthoNebraska treats such a wide range of conditions, “implementing self-scheduling seemed like a daunting task,” said Green. “We need to get patients to the right provider. The patient’s current needs, their age range, their clinical history, the approach they’re looking for – all of these factors affect scheduling.” 

Deep integration with their Cerner EHR was a must-have. Other vendors OrthoNebraska evaluated weren’t equipped to match each patient with the right appointments and providers for them, according to Green.

Ultimately, Green and her colleagues chose Luma as the foundation for their digital front door. 

After integrating Luma with their Cerner system, “we felt more comfortable giving that self-scheduling power to patients,” said Green. “We were able to trust that the technical build itself would direct patients to the right provider.”

The choice of a platform over a scheduling point solution has already allowed OrthoNebraska to solve more inefficiencies on their journey to a unified, simple patient experience. 

“Our nurses are very busy, so patients calling with clinical questions would need to leave a message,” said Green. “With Luma, nurses can respond to patients via text while they’re multitasking, which has been huge for patient success and nurses’ job satisfaction.”

Green sees wins like these as the first steps in OrthoNebraska’s digital transformation. 

“It’s exciting that huge improvements like self-scheduling are just the beginning. We’re confident that Luma will complement the initiatives we’ll tackle in the future.”

Want to learn more? Book a quick call with a Luma + Oracle Health expert.

Patient Success Advocate Profiles highlight the perspectives of providers and healthcare leaders in delivering world-class healthcare access and outcomes.

Dr. Medhavi Jogi notices the little things – especially when they could cause bigger issues down the road. This skill has served him well during his years of practice in endocrinology. Dr. Jogi’s reputation for thoughtful care has helped place his practice, Houston Thyroid and Endocrine Specialists, on the map.  

When he founded HTES, he quickly noticed that his patients often faced the challenge of learning about their new diagnosis and managing it. Dr. Jogi tried to empower each person with as much information as he could during their visit, often spending over 90 minutes in a single visit. 

However, “it often became information overload. I’d find myself repeating the same information at each appointment. What I wanted was an automated system to connect with our patients, which in 2009 was crazy talk,” he recalled. 

Dr. Jogi found Luma when looking for a better way to teach patients about new diagnoses. “I consider myself to be an educator first, and I needed to find a better way to teach my patients,” said Dr. Jogi. “Luma was the solution I’d been looking for since I started my practice.” 

Now, HTES uses Luma to automatically send each new patient an educational video before their visit based on their specific health and appointment needs. “Immediately, we saw outcomes improve – patients were coming to their sessions better informed and ready to dive deeper into nuances of their needs,” Dr. Jogi said.

“Because the videos already covered the basics, appointment times dropped from 90 minutes to often just ten minutes, focusing on more interesting questions and complexities. This absolutely changed my relationship with patients and has kept me sharp as an educator and practitioner,” said Dr. Jogi. 

Dr. Jogi credits Luma with helping HTES reach more patients and allowing him more time to focus on the little things about each person and their needs.

“Patients just want to talk to the right person who can help them,” he said. “Luma has helped my practice connect patients in need with the care that will help them be healthier.” 

Want to learn more? Book a quick call with a Luma + eClinicalWorks expert.