Podcast Q&A with Pamela Landis, Part 1: “It Is Too Hard to Figure Out How to Access Care.”

For Pamela Landis, improving access to care isn’t just a job; it’s a calling. Despite advances in technology, navigating the system remains difficult for far too many patients. “It’s hard to manage,” she said during a recent interview. “It really matters to me that we find ways to make it easier.”

To make that a reality, two things need to happen: the workflow needs to be as efficient as possible for clinicians, and the experience has to be as valuable as possible for consumers. It’s a tall order, but one Landis is more than willing to help fulfill in her role as VP of Digital Engagement at Hackensack Meridian Health.

In fact, she was recruited to the 17-hospital system for that exact reason in the spring of 2019. Fortunately, Landis and her team had already started putting the building blocks into place to create a digital health strategy by the time Covid-19 arrived. In this interview, she talks about how Hackensack was able to “pivot” when the pandemic hit, the critical role a solid governance structure plays in digital transformation, and the valuable lessons she learned from her time in public relations.

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Key Takeaways



* The VP of digital engagement role is “a blend of IT, marketing, communications, and operations.”

* Hackensack Meridian established a contact center for one basic reason: “It’s too hard to figure out how to get access to care.”

* Covid amplified the need to improve the experience for both consumers and team members, and make it easier for them to access important information.

* During the first few weeks of the pandemic, the focus was on “keeping people informed and safe,” which meant pivoting away from onsite visits and leveraging digital tools to communicate and provide care.

* Having a solid data and analytics platform enabled Hackensack Meridian to predict surges based on upticks in calls and texts.





Q&A with Pamela Landis, Part 1

Gamble:  Hi Pam, thanks so much for taking some time to speak with us. Can you start by providing a brief overview of your role and what you’re focused on most?

Landis:  Sure. My position is a blend of IT, marketing, communications, and operations. My team has responsibility for all websites, mobile applications, collaborative strategies, and patient engagement strategies. It’s everything from MyChart to patient-generated data; we also have social media, consumer analytics and reporting, and campaign management.

What ties it all together is the contact center. We had begun building out a network-wide contact center into which all the data flow. It was staffed by agents who were mostly working from home, answering patient inquiries via phone, text, and live chat. If you think about all of the internally and externally facing emerging technologies around experience, that’s where my team gets involved.

 

Gamble:  Can you talk a little bit about how the contact center came about?

Landis:  What we did, and what we’re doing, is the same think a lot of hospitals and health systems across the country have done. The reality is that it is too hard to figure out how to get access to care. And so we decided to centralize the scheduling and registration for all points of access to care at Hackensack Meridian Health into one place. That’s what my team is working on — making it easier for people to see their doctors, but also to get their tests done, have their mammograms, get their labs, or come in for same-day surgeries. There should be one place. It could be many phone numbers,