Southern Indiana Surgery Case Study
Enable Your Bariatric Surgery Programs To Reach Thousands Of Weight Loss Patients
Southern Indiana Surgery has long known that telehealth is the way for them to connect and engage with patients. Even prior to Covid, offering support groups and Zoom classes provided a convenient way to connect with their patients and community. With a growing practice, and a high demand, SI Surgery knew that they needed a more streamlined way to support their bariatric patients, both before and after surgery.
With Healthie, SI Surgery was able to build out online programming to support their surgical, and non-surgical weight loss patients. For bariatric patients, they added virtual general information sessions, a pre-op program, and a post-op “Back On Track” program. Collectively, the education and support provided through their series of programs allowed SI to retain more patients and drive patient success.
Prior to Healthie, Kelli Pitman, RN BSN CBN and SI Surgery’s Bariatric Program Coordinator, explains that the practice needed to refer new patients to their primary care physician for 6 months of medically supervised visits. These visits, required by insurance payers, are critical for receiving surgery approval. “We were losing 65% of our referrals when sending patients out to their primary care physicians for medically supervised weight loss, they weren’t returning."
To improve patient education and surgery preparedness, SI Surgery implemented an in-house Medically Supervised Weight Loss program. To extend their program reach, and deliver education to patients who were traveling 50+ miles to seek care, SI Surgery took their program virtual. "Healthie allowed us to pull those patients into our Medically Supervised Weight Loss program via telehealth thereby making it more accessible to them and in turn, providing them with better education for preparation of surgery," shares Kelli Pitman.
With the efforts of their Medically Supervised Weigh Loss program, and the right technology support, Southern Indian Surgery is now seeing the number of patient referrals going through to surgery at almost 100%.
When local community support for weight loss disappeared, SI surgery had another opportunity to extend their wellness services. Through Healthie, they created a Non-Surgical Weight Loss program, designed to deliver quality nutritional care and education to community members in need.
By making patient care more convenient and engaging, Southern Indiana Surgery has been able to build a successful surgical clinic that is invaluable to their community.
"Healthie allowed us to pull patients into our Medically Supervised Weight Loss program via telehealth, thereby making it more accessible to them, and in turn providing them with better education for preparation of surgery."
Bariatric Program Coordinator & Clinical Manager
Why Southern Indiana Surgery Chose Healthie
Reduced time on administrative tasks
“Healthie has given us a lot of different tools to replace manual work,” says Kelli. With automatic appointment reminders, message blasts, electronic paperwork, SI Surgery has streamlined the process of working with bariatric patients. “Healthie has allowed us to make our documents more electronic and more accessible to our patients -- versus handing them a paper sheet that they may or may not hand back in.
Increased session attendance & patient retention
Prior to Healthie, Kelli states that they would typically see 3-4 patients in-person for attendance. With virtual support groups, and automatic appointment reminders, their groups now host 30-40 patients at once. Even more, with their “Back On Track” online programming, SI Surgery is able to support patients who are 2-3 years post-op and have hit a roadblock in their progress. With long-term support and education, patients are able to find incredible success in their weight loss journey.
Improved patient engagement & education.
Not only do bariatric patients prefer their virtual support sessions (in fact, 69% of patient visits were virtual last year), they also are engaging with practitioners through Healthie. Healthie offers online patient/provider messaging and food & lifestyle journaling that allows practitioners to engage with patients in real time. SI Surgery is able to upload countless resources to Healthie, to be shared electronically with patients. From pre-op manuals, to educational videos, and educational handouts, all materials are conveniently accessible to patients. From there, patients are able to message their practitioner with any questions, further enhancing patient education.
Ease of use across practitioners
Southern Indiana Surgery is able to utilize Healthie across their surgeons, nurse practitioners, and dietitians to provide truly comprehensive patient care. While other clinics struggled through Covid to provide multi-disciplinary, and continuous care, SI was able to quickly transition all patients virtually. “During Covid, it was so simple to make the transition, we didn’t miss a beat. We were able to keep all of our patients engaged. We were still giving adequate care to our patients. It was important to have a platform that had that level of ease, to make it work for us.”
Data and reporting capabilities
For Southern Indiana Surgery, being able to collect patient data and feedback is integral to their success as a practice. “We are all about data and statistics in our programs. We send data intake forms to gather information to track demographics. It’s important from a marketing perspective to know where your patients are coming from -- and we use Healthie for that data.” Through Healthie, they are able to collect patient data intake forms, track session attendance, send patient satisfaction surveys, and much more. “We build our agendas each year based on what our patients want to see versus what we think they want to see, so we need their input. Healthie has allowed us to do that.”
Southern Indiana Surgery’s Favorite Healthie Features
Online Programs
Healthie enables organizations to create open-enrollment and fixed-date programs, automatically distributing program content to enrolled participants.
Telehealth
HIPAA-compliant telehealth capabilities for individual and group video sessions, as well as the ability to host webinars. Engage with clients in a way that is convenient and flexible, reaching clients wherever they are.
Client Mobile App
Engage with clients virtually with food and lifestyle logging, messaging, and telehealth on the go.
Documents
Internal library of patient educational resources (videos, PDFs, documents, and more) that can be shared by practitioners and patients alike through Healthie’s integrated EHR.
Get Started With Healthie
Build on modern infrastructure for virtual-first care.