NYU Langone Health Launches New Technology Platform To Transform Digital Patient Experience

NYU Langone Health today announced the launch of a first-of-its-kind clinical affairs patient access center platform that streamlines and optimizes the way call center agents interact with patients. The new platform provides agents with a holistic and customized view of a patient’s needs by providing access to both Salesforce Health Cloud and the electronic health record through real-time integration.

The new platform was conceptualized by Andrew Rubin, vice president for clinical affairs and ambulatory care, NYU Langone, and Nader Mherabi, senior vice president and vice dean, chief information officer, NYU Langone.  It was developed and implemented through a unique collaboration between the clinical affairs and information technology teams at NYU Langone in partnership with Salesforce, Cisco, and Mulesoft.

“Today’s patients expect a higher service standard and our patient access center is critical to meeting that expectation,” said Rubin. “Working together, we’ve developed a platform that empowers our agents, provides improved patient access, and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to excellence.”

“NYU Langone is proud to be the first medical center to create and implement this proprietary new platform at our patient access centers, significantly improving the way patients communicate with our health system, leading to a highly personalized and more seamless patient experience,” said Mherabi. “This new advance provides unprecedented real-time access to health records, facilitating a more meaningful connection between the hospital and patient. Until now, this real-time integration has not yet been achieved in healthcare.”

The new clinical affairs patient access center platform, leveraging the Salesforce Platform, will enable NYU Langone’s agents to have more individualized and informed interactions with patients. Using Health Cloud, all patient access center agents have a single view of the patient, including medical history, insurance information, scheduled appointments and preferences, all in one place. Data is made available in real-time, allowing unprecedented access to accurate, timely patient information, all while the patient remains on the phone. Agents will now have a nearly complete view of the patient, which reduces wait times and leads to significant cost savings.

The first phase of the program was launched for the NYU Langone Huntington Medical Group in February 2018, and will be implemented across NYU Langone’s inpatient and outpatient locations by the end of the year. In the future, the new system will be optimized to include chat functionality and video features.

“At NYU Langone we receive upwards of 2.2 million calls per year, and because of the high volume of calls, we need our patient access center agents to have patient information at their fingertips quickly, to more effectively communicate with patients,” said Suresh Srinivasan, chief technology officer at NYU Langone. “This represents a major step forward in our ability to help patients each time they get in touch with the medical center, while enabling significant cost and time savings.”