How the Pandemic Changed the Self-Scheduling Plans of St. Luke’s Hospital

The hospital invested in the technology with an eye toward starting with urgent care and mammography. Suddenly, COVID-19 testing was the focus. Today, use of self-scheduling has grown beyond pre-pandemic levels. The first reason was retention of existing patients seeking greater and more convenient access to certain healthcare services across the health system, and the second was acquisition of new patients who had not yet had an experience with the St. Luke’s network of care.

St. Luke’s had a prior relationship with IT vendor Stericycle Communication Solutions, using the vendor’s Intelligent Scheduling product powered by InQuicker. “We selected the solution because they were offering patients at the Des Peres Hospital ED the ability to request a projected treatment time to be seen,” said Greg Hudson, network chief strategy officer at St. Luke’s Hospital. “Seeing good results with that service line, St. Luke’s added multiple urgent care sites, an after-hours children’s clinic, mammography screening and massage therapy.”

When the pandemic hit, St. Luke’s needed a way to conveniently schedule virtual visits and testing. St. Luke’s worked with Stericycle in April 2020 to use InQuicker to initiate its COVID-19 testing center and use the platform to reopen safely by appropriately socially distancing patients in various care-delivery sites. Virtual care visits at the urgent care sites also were scheduled through the platform.