Ascension Health System

Ascension Health System is expanding geographically and increasing the number of specialties they provide, as the network continues to acquire smaller regional health groups across the U.S. Ascension partnered with AgencyQ to deliver a higher quality, more consistent digital customer experience that would build trust with current and future patients—in a time where patients have more choice than ever when it comes their care.

AgencyQ worked with Ascension on two major initiatives: 

The first was creating a more customer-centric and intuitive digital experience for prospective consumers pursuing bariatric surgery. What is already an emotional and difficult journey was further complicated by a confusing user experience that limited confidence and often deterred consumers from registering for the informational seminars required to make an appointment with a surgeon. This problem was exacerbated by Ascension’s recent growth. As the system acquired new patient centers, each came with its own approach and digital experience. This became very difficult for Ascension to manage and communicate any sort of standard of care.

The second was the rapid design and development of a microsite to promote the opening of the new Studer Family Children’s Hospital. The site needed to showcase the new state of the art facility and instill confidence for parents around what they can expect when it comes to their child’s care. The site succinctly shows the specialty focus areas and healthcare providers to build trust that Studer is the right place for your family’s needs.

For the bariatric surgery customer experience, AgencyQ conducted in-depth interviews with providers, patients and staff to understand the full scope of the journey, and where the typical drop off points were occurring. We also conducted a detailed competitive audit and analyzed Ascension’s analytics data to ensure the quantitative data was matching the qualitative feedback we were hearing. Based on these inputs, we designed a new end to end user experience for Bariatric Surgery seminar registration—consisting of journey maps, workflow schemas and wireframes—that reduced friction and clearly indicated the next steps for users. We also mapped digital and human points of engagement so that if a user did stall in the process, Ascension can reach out to provide support—whether from a human or virtually.

For the Studer Family site, we quickly prototyped the new site, creating a library of easy to use templates, and a color palette that would be engaging and give visual hierarchy among the vast amounts of information. The new site was built on a .NET platform that would allow the site to scale quickly in the future as Studer’s content grows, or easily be migrated into Ascension’s existing Sitecore platform. End to end the site was designed and launch in just over two months’ time.

Ascension received a significant increase in patient seminar registrations, their KPI for the new Bariatric user experience. Additionally, more patient candidates were reaching out to confer with physicians, and doing this earlier in the process, a key driver of healthier post-surgical outcomes.

The Studer Hospital site, originally intended to be a temporary support for the new building’s launch, is now in continuous use and is driving physician referral activity above benchmarks. Ascension’s content editors are able to frequently and efficiently publish new content, ensuring information is accurate and readily available to patients and their families.