About Kennedy Community Health

Kennedy Community Health provides comprehensive and compassionate health care and wraparound services to 35,000 patients annually from over 100 communities across Massachusetts. Kennedy Community Health’s mission is to “Help people live healthier lives.”

As a Federally Qualified Community Health Center (FQHC) that must stay on top of evolving federal and state compliance requirements, Kennedy Community Health searched for a solution to perfect the patient experience while balancing operational and fiscal responsibilities.

Challenge

With a goal to provide high-quality, respectful, and compassionate care to their community, Kennedy Community Health faced numerous operational and staffing challenges. After joining the Health Center as COO, Ruby Pezanetti recognized the need to address these critical pain points.

“There were long lines creating backups across our schedule. The longer it took a patient to register, the longer it took for them to get back and be seen by a provider. We wanted to address these gaps and others with one flexible solution,” she shared.

With 57 providers delivering top-quality care to 35,000 patients annually, Kennedy Community Health looked to improve patient access and communications while simultaneously solving administrative and clinical bottlenecks.

Pezanetti shared how scheduling came into the picture:

“Originally, over 80% of our patients were walking in just to schedule or reschedule an appointment. Those who didn’t come in were calling and waiting on hold. We needed to provide our patients a better alternative.”

Juli Dooley, Senior Vice President of Advancement and Communications at Kennedy Community Health, described additional challenges they were facing as an organization, particularly when it came to patient communications.

“Keeping patient contact information up to date had been a historical challenge and left us unsure as to whether communications reached the intended recipients,” she said.

With low portal adoption rates and data collection challenges, Kennedy Community Health also struggled to determine what information could be used for claims, collections, and billing purposes.

Kristen Ells, Director of Population Health and Clinical Quality, added:

“Kennedy Community Health originally relied on a multi-platform approach for communications, including website alerts, social media, and thousands of mailed letters, which incurred high costs. It was also incredibly time-consuming to manage.”

Combining the Power of Clearwave & Vital Interaction

To tackle challenges across the patient journey, Kennedy Community Health launched Clearwave Eligibility, AI-Driven Scheduling Logic, Clinical Intake, and Registration, along with Vital Interaction’s AI-powered patient engagement platform.

Reviewing the partnership, Pezanetti shared:

“As an FQHC, we have to balance patient needs with operational requirements. Our duty is to make sure that whatever solutions we move forward with are not only financially viable but also sustainable. With Clearwave and Vital Interaction, we see that value in action every day. We’re able to prove our ROI, and most importantly, we’re in a better position to meet our patients’ needs.”

The Vital Interaction Solution

Vital Interaction’s patient education and reactivation campaigns have enabled Kennedy Community Health to launch hyper-personalized patient communications that close care gaps without any staff intervention.

Leveraging the power of AI, each campaign is automatically tailored to the patient’s preferred language, including Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, and more.

Bringing Patients Back With Smarter Communications

“Vital has been a game-changer for us in tracking various quality metrics. The reactivation campaigns have been instrumental in delivering key patient call-to-actions,” Pezanetti said.

“For example, with certain patients, we need blood pressure checks to be done according to a specific cadence. With Vital, we’re able to run the report to identify those patients and instantly get in touch to bring them back in for necessary care. We can cover those care gaps and no-shows all with this one, user-friendly tool.”

On their unique no-show approach, Pezanetti shared:

“Even if patients aren’t able to make their appointments, we’re leveraging these campaigns and Vital’s surveys to understand why patients are missing appointments and help them get re-booked. What’s impactful is that we’re able to capture all this information through one interaction with our patients.”

Kennedy Community Health also runs patient reactivation campaigns for diabetes, well-child visits, no-shows, cancelled appointments, and more.

Just 60 days post-launch, Kennedy Community Health achieved a 47% reactivation rate and brought 1,749 patients back into care. That number continues to increase every day.

Compared to previous approaches, which required hours of manual staff intervention, Vital Interaction’s automated approach has helped Kennedy Community Health boost its patient reactivation response rate by 34%.

The Health Center also leverages Vital Interaction’s AI-powered tools to personalize new patient communications.

Pezanetti commented:

“The educational content for our new patients is amazing. Using Vital’s smart AI solutions, we’ve created personalized videos from our providers that help to welcome patients to our practice.”

This personalization helps Kennedy Community Health achieve its goal of providing hands-on and personalized care in a way that’s scalable for thousands of patients.

The Clearwave Solution

Kennedy Community Health launched Clearwave Scheduling via Online and Call Center, Registration, Clinical Intake, and Eligibility.

Pezanetti said:

“We were impressed with the breadth of Clearwave’s platform right from the start, and the ongoing patient adoption of these solutions has been essential for improving administrative and clinical workloads.”

Streamlining Patient Scheduling and Intake

Kennedy Community Health’s call center agents book over 17,000 appointments over the span of a single year, with an additional 1,300 appointments made online, 43% of which occurred after hours.

By diverting phone traffic online, Kennedy Community Health saved a total of 108 hours over the course of a year, with an agent per-call booking average of 5 minutes.

Pezanetti said:

“We love that patients can schedule online, anytime. They can book directly from our reactivation campaigns and easily reschedule appointments through reminders. We’ve given them the flexibility to make changes and get it done quickly.”

Kennedy Community Health sees 88% clinical intake completion rates by patients prior to their appointments.

Pezanetti added:

“Our Medical Assistants are grateful that patients are completing clinical intake in advance. This action has saved hours of time for MAs, who would otherwise be calling patients in advance to screen them for the different elements. That medical data feeds into our Electronic Medical Record, allowing providers to see responses, prepare questions, and discuss a good plan of action once patients arrive.”

Pezanetti continued:

“The adoption of pre-registration in advance is critical. We’ve seen our wait times go down across the board. It’s extremely beneficial not just for the patients, but also for our staff to be able to focus their time on other tasks that will bring the most value.”

Check-in times at Kennedy Community Health average approximately two minutes, with a 96% self-registration patient adoption rate via kiosk and mobile. In-office adoption started strong and only further improved.

“The kiosk adoption rate is mind-blowing for our teams. We had a concierge at the start, but now patients just walk straight to the kiosk,” Pezanetti said.

Improving Accessibility and Compliance

Discussing inclusivity, Pezanetti shared:

“The Clearwave kiosks, both the standalone and desktop versions, help us stay ADA-compliant, which is something other vendors often overlook. Having these options helps us provide the right tools to our elderly or disabled population, which is very important.”

She continued:

“We serve a patient population who speaks a wide range of languages. Working with a vendor that could partner with us to support that language capability was critical. That’s another major benefit to having Clearwave.”

As an FQHC, Kennedy Community Health must stay on top of annual forms and screeners.

Pezanetti shared:

“From a compliance perspective, we know that certain annual tasks are getting done at the right time because of the automation Clearwave provides in the background. If there’s a consent form that needs to be signed every year, it will prompt patients during check-in to complete that form.”

Kennedy Community Health recently received a perfect score during its tri-annual Federal Health Center Program compliance site visit.

“A key factor in getting a perfect score on our operational site visit is the sliding fee. During pre-screen intake, we ask for family size and household income, which are two of the elements that we must screen a patient for to perform a sliding fee scale. Clearwave captures that data so our staff can quickly provide those patients with the application,” Pezanetti said.

Speeding Up Insurance Verification

With Clearwave Registration, patients can update phone numbers and addresses on the spot, helping Kennedy Community Health improve records for critical outreach later on.

“Clearwave gives us the ability to capture accurate information directly from our patients and ensure it flows into our EMR and practice management systems. This has reduced redundancies, manual data entry, and errors,” Pezanetti noted.

Clearwave Eligibility has further improved data accuracy and simplified insurance verification from the start.

Pezanetti said:

“I love that Clearwave checks eligibility seven times before the actual scheduled appointments. Our teams are seeing that instant check and reviewing the flags, which means they no longer have to go to 10 different payer websites or review insurance patient-by-patient. They can quickly identify gaps and narrow in on specific issues. Staff can see if patients are uninsured or underinsured. They can proactively refer patients to our in-house Health Benefits Advisor/Navigators to discuss options prior to patient visits, which is crucial for us.”

Kennedy Community Health presents accurate co-pays right at the kiosk and has driven a 10% increase in average collection rates, which can be a challenging feat for FQHCs.

Saving Time and Money Every Day

“We’ve been able to lower cost plans and reduce unnecessary vendors by eliminating manual printing and stamps, and we have saved staff time by pushing urgent communications out digitally,” Dooley explained.

Ells added:

“Vital has saved us time and money, freeing up staff to focus on other critical tasks that were previously hard to complete due to the volume of our communications.”

“We were able to send 35,000 patients a general compliance notification in just 30 minutes, which proves the time and dollar savings of this feature,” Pezanetti said.

“We are able to track the effectiveness and efficiency of our campaigns to determine true ROI. We see the number of texts that went through. We see how many patients respond to our messages, and we can act accordingly.”

Maintaining Patient Trust

Ensuring cleaner, more reliable data delivery has helped Kennedy Community Health enhance patient trust and engagement.

Dooley said:

“Vital’s system has helped us resolve issues with messages being marked as spam, and we have significantly reduced the number of blocked emails that previously occurred.”

Kennedy Community Health is always thinking ahead.

“Especially now, with the holiday season, there’s a lot of fraudulent activity. With Vital Interaction’s unique contact card, our patients can easily save our information on their phones. They can trust that the texts or phone calls we send are coming from their trusted healthcare partner,” Pezanetti commented.

By combining the power of Clearwave and Vital Interaction, Kennedy Community Health provides patients with the option to self-schedule appointments on the spot, improving patient access and education all at once.

Looking ahead at future patient education campaigns, Ells said:

“We’re considering educational campaigns, such as Breast Cancer Awareness Month or reminders for mammograms, and we are excited about using AI provider videos for other educational purposes.”

About Vital Interaction Ready to engage patients with AI and automation that boosts visits? Vital Interaction is a patient engagement platform that helps healthcare providers engage with their patients through personalized communications and solutions. Close care gaps and drive more completed appointments. Learn why practices love Vital Interaction at www.vitalinteraction.com