western new york integrated care leader
Easing Care Journeys With a Commerce-Like Experience
What if your digital front door could triage like a clinician, personalize like a concierge, and convert like a commerce platform to improve access, trust, and outcomes?
Challenge + Opportunity
Our client is an integrated health services organization serving the people of western New York. The system has more than 19,000 employees and is comprised of several hospitals, outpatient laboratories, rehabilitation programs, surgical centers, assisted living centers, and more.
To drive revenue and build a competitive advantage, the health system needed to strategically enhance its website’s search, find care, and online appointment-booking experiences while balancing differentiated locations with a cohesive brand experience. The organization also needed a modern, scalable solution to replace its legacy Sitecore PaaS implementation.
Our client wanted a fresh, dynamic experience that better supported current patients and attracted new ones, and engaged us to provide a strategic assessment, design a digital roadmap, and execute recommended improvements.
Transforming Patient Access With Sitecore and Coveo
We crafted a patient-centered website strategy and roadmap followed by a complete site redesign. This multi-faceted implementation began by unifying 24 distinct websites into a single, cohesive digital experience.
We migrated our client to a modern, headless SaaS-based Sitecore XM Cloud platform that, together with Vercel, eases development, optimizes code deployments, and enhances business agility.
A key innovation was the integration of Sitecore XM Cloud with Sitecore Personalize, which enables personalized user experiences and a regional toggle to differentiate locations.
We also delivered highly performant, SEO-optimized page experiences and an improved content-authoring interface that reduces IT dependency and makes it easier for internal teams to edit and publish content. Next, we conducted a large-scale content migration of more than 4,800 web pages and 8,000 media items.
To further streamline the care journey, we implemented Coveo for a unified, AI-enabled search experience with intuitive provider and location filters.
We also enabled real-time appointment availability and online booking by integrating with Epic through a layered services architecture. This approach—leveraging both client- and Perficient-developed services—unlocks Epic-contained data such as physician availability, open scheduling, and facility wait times, while securely writing appointment bookings back to Epic in near real-time. Importantly, patient data is transmitted directly to Epic without being stored, ensuring PHI protection and compliance.
We leveraged cutting-edge technology to create a modern website that made a profound impact for the client, resulting in an impressive 69% portal sign-up conversion rate and a 26% increase in appointment scheduling.
Results
Nurturing Patient Engagement and Care With Digital Innovation
Leveraging cutting-edge technology and prioritizing user experience, we created a digital healthcare ecosystem that removes friction, enhances access, and future-proofs the patient journey. The impact of creating a modern website was profound. Within the first quarter following go-live, our client saw an increase in all key leading indicators and KPIs:
- 26% increase in online appointment scheduling for existing patients
- 27% improvement in SEO rankings
- 23% increase in overall website visitors
- 49% increase in page views
- 88% decrease in page load times
- 9% increase in average time spent on pages
The client's patient portal to engage and manage care, experienced a remarkable 708% increase in traffic and an impressive 69% sign-up conversion rate.
Our client also saw an 8% increase in virtual visits for urgent care, which saves money over more-costly in-person care. The organization is also saving more than $113,000 a month on call center costs by enabling patients to self-serve to identify providers that fit their needs and book appointments online—thanks in part to the seamless integration with Epic that powers real-time scheduling and availability.
Perficient’s deep healthcare industry and digital transformation expertise made us the ideal partner to bring the health system’s vision to life by delivering a modern, patient-centric experience that drives engagement, efficiency, and long-term success.
