Hospitals Turn To Outsourcing To Improve Find-A-Doctor Sites Access

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Community Health Network partners with Kyruus to improve patient access.

Physician finder sites are often the first point of contact for a patient when accessing a hospital or health system, but a recent Kyruus report revealed more than half of the top U.S. hospitals and health systems (52.5 percent) lack the ability for patients to narrow their search for a clinically appropriate doctor based on medical conditions or symptoms. As a means of addressing these shortcomings, a number of hospitals are beginning to turn to outsourcing as a solution to their patient access needs.

Earlier this year, Steward Health Care System, New England’s second largest health system, announced a partnership with Kyruus which will drive patient-provider matching solutions across the network of approximately 3,000 primary care physicians and specialists as well as power the system’s online physician search tool. Kyruus also partnered with the largest health system in New England, Partners Healthcare, and Houston Methodist hospital has announced it was adopting the same technology.

This growing adoption highlights the massive issues hospitals face: the referral of patients to the wrong doctors. “One of the largest data opportunities in healthcare – building and maintaining reliable and actionable information about the providers available to service patient needs – has also historically been one of the hardest to tackle,” Dr. Graham Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Kyruus, explained.

Now, Community Health Network is among the latest to adopt this strategy. “A core aspect of our vision at Community is to provide an exceptional experience to every patient that seeks care here,” Julie O’Toole, vice president of patient experience at Community Health Network, said in a press release. “Kyruus’s ability to simultaneously enrich and simplify the way we connect patients with our providers enhances our ability to deliver on this promise.”

“Optimizing patient experience begins at the first point of contact. We have a responsibility to make sure that patients get referred to the right provider the first time so that care is delivered efficiently and at the highest quality standards,” said Dr. Graham Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Kyruus. “We are proud to partner with organizations like Community Health Network that share this vision and look forward to helping serve their patients.”