Multi-Channel Outreach Maximizes COVID-19 Vaccination Appointments

Discover how HonorHealth partnered with Actium Health to deploy outreach campaigns and increase vaccination appointments by 30%.

Case Study Highlights

  • 2,000+ vaccination appointments scheduled in less than 2 weeks
  • 1,000 more inbound calls a day to NOAH’s call center (30% increase)
  • 50% of recipients who received an SMS message engaged within 24 hours
  • Exceeded goal by more than 500 appointments

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An Urgent Communication Need

Arizona was hit particularly hard by COVID-19. It led the country in coronavirus-related hospitalizations with roughly 90% of ICU beds occupied during the summer of 2020, and was the first state to trigger “crisis care standards” to help healthcare workers determine the prioritization of treatment.

Serving more than 3 million patients, including 1.6 million individuals in greater Phoenix alone, HonorHealth recognized the lofty yet noble task it faced after learning that vaccines for the virus would become available in December 2020. It would need to efficiently and effectively communicate the vaccine’s availability to its patients to get as many eligible individuals vaccinated as quickly as possible.

Tailoring Outreach

In mid-January 2021, vaccination appointment scheduling volume had slowed significantly. Fifteen hundred appointment slots needed to be filled as vaccines were not being fully utilized. Action needed to be taken quickly. 

Having an intimate understanding of its patient demographic, HonorHealth identified two patient groups it knew would be particularly difficult, yet critically important, to engage:

  • • Individuals age 75+ 
  • • Underserved communities

More than 37% of Phoenix’s population do not speak English as their primary language, and more than 17% of the city’s households do not have a broadband internet connection. Without reliable internet access and information about eligibility and registration provided in their native language, it’s likely that available appointments would continue to go unfilled, and vaccination rates would remain low. A non-traditional and highly tailored method of engagement was needed.

multi-channel outreach healthcare campaign
actium

37%

of the population does not speak English as a primary language

actium

17%

of households do not have broadband internet

Multiple Channel Patient Engagement

Partnering with Actium, HonorHealth developed and launched a multichannel vaccination campaign that included SMS messages to fill the empty appointments by engaging the two target patient groups.

Results – Driving Greater Utilization of Vaccinations

CAMPAIGN #1: SMS outreach to patients 75+

Same-day text messages were sent to patients over 75 who had either interacted with a COVID vaccine information page, and/or read a MyChart message notifying them of vaccine eligibility.

CAMPAIGN #2: Text messages to individuals in underserved communities

Working closely with Neighborhood Outreach Access to Health (NOAH), its sister organization of community health centers serving more than 40,000 patients throughout Metro Phoenix, 2,800 text messages were deployed to individuals in underserved communities.

As a result of the two campaigns, more than 2,000 vaccination appointments were scheduled at HonorHealth in less than two weeks, exceeding the goal by more than 500 appointments, and a 30% increase in patient scheduling for the COVID vaccine at NOAH.

multichannel patient engagement
actium

2,000+

vaccination appointments scheduled in less than 2 weeks

actium

1,000

more inbound calls a day to NOAH’s call center (30% increase)

actium

50%

of recipients who received an SMS message engaged within 24 hours

“Actium enabled us to quickly and proactively reach out to eligible patients who were most likely to schedule vaccine appointments via SMS with near immediate results.”

CRAIG KARTCHNER
AVP of Marketing & Customer Experience, HonorHealth

Building on SMS Outreach

The success of these multi-channel campaigns led HonorHealth to immediately adopt SMS outreach & management as part of their critical communications and data-driven campaigns across their organization and NOAH.

actium

Rapid deployment

actium

Multi-channel

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Optimized scheduling

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