The Problem
For Embark Behavioral Health to acquire and intake patients at scale, their digital marketing and operational processes needed an upgrade. Unfortunately, the existing Salesforce Sales Cloud platform wasn’t configured for scalability or automation. Here’s what Embark Behavioral Health was up against.
Complicated Family Hierarchies
Patients are more than just individuals. The acquisition process involves a complicated network of families, physicians, and insurance companies. Documenting these relationships correctly is crucial later on in the intake process. The problem? They hadn’t configured Salesforce Sales Cloud to track the interconnected relationships between payers, physicians, parents, guardians, and children, making it harder to intake patients after referral acquisition.
Gaps in Lead Attribution
Acquiring new patients starts with knowing what’s working, which marketing strategies are driving awareness, and which referral sources are paying off. But for Embark Behavioral Health, connecting the dots between incoming patients and the strategies that brought them in wasn’t so simple. Their attribution data was messy, making it nearly impossible to pinpoint the best-performing channels during the acquisition process. Without clear insights, their provider relationship team struggled to double-down on what was working.
Inefficient Intake Processes
Every call, whether related to support, operations, or an inquiry about services, generated a new lead in their system. This clogged the intake process with unnecessary data.
Technical Debt & Poor System Design
Embark Behavioral Health’s patient acquisition and intake platform wasn’t built with healthcare in mind, and it showed. In healthcare, especially behavioral health, the data model is an interconnected web of patients, families, payers, and providers. Embark’s platform couldn’t track these key relationships during the acquisition process, making it tough to coordinate care during intake. Add in years of technical debt, cluttered field layouts, and outdated configurations, and the result was a sluggish, frustrating intake process.
Poor Partner Experiences
To top it all off, Embark Behavioral Health had less-than-stellar experiences with other Salesforce partners. These partners lacked the necessary healthcare focus to implement a patient intake and acquisition platform based on best practices. That’s where Penrod stepped in to set a new standard for partnership.
The Solution
At Penrod, we don’t just slap a solution on a problem. We use our 100%-healthcare focus to partner with clients on a level that Salesforce generalists can't. Here's how we did it at Embark Behavioral Health.
Crafting a Clear Plan
We kicked things off with a clear plan, straightforward milestones, and a sharp focus on outcomes. Every new implementation begins with an analysis of what is already in place. That’s why we delved into understanding the current patient acquisition and intake system, as well as the underlying data architecture. By doing this groundwork, we ensured the essentials were ready for a smooth migration and that the bottlenecks were identified for removal.
With a solid plan in place, Penrod went to work on the new platform, built on Salesforce Health Cloud and Marketing Cloud.
Cleaning Up
Penrod cleaned up technical debt, freeing up resources and contracts that weren't being utilized. Employee experience trickles down to patient experience very quickly. By reducing clicks, consolidating fields, and rearranging pages, we simplified the process for Embark Behavioral Health to acquire and intake patients.
Building an Engine for Acquisition and Intake
With the foundation for a healthy platform in place, Penrod began building an acquisition engine. It started with a framework for lead scoring, activity tracking, and automated assignment. The framework simplified the management of referrals, making the process from acquisition to intake significantly faster.
We also improved acquisition with automated emails that keep referral partners, alums, and prospective patients engaged. Provider partners? They stayed informed with automatic updates on new locations and services. And incoming inquiries? They are handled with automated follow-ups, saving time and reducing administrative work.
On the patient side, mobile-friendly intake forms start engagements on the right foot and map patient information directly into a secure Health Cloud environment, eliminating the need for manual data entry. Intake coordinators can quickly act on the data, ensuring a seamless transition from acquisition to intake.
Driving Decisions with Attribution
We didn’t stop at the process. By rolling out lead attribution sources across partners, alumni, digital ads, and more, we gave Embark Behavioral Health the power to track its most effective referral sources. The result? Smarter marketing budgets that continuously improve with new information.
Automated Outreach
Outreach has never been easier for Embark Behavioral Health. We automated communication with providers, alums, and the community, creating an ongoing referral engine that drives the right engagement at the right time.
KPI Visibility & Actionable Insights
New dashboards gave Embark Behavioral Health’s leadership the power to see their entire intake process in real-time. From funnel drop-offs to top referral sources, decision-makers now have the data they need to identify bottlenecks, fill gaps, and make informed improvements.
Results
Automated Acquisition
The automated outreach workflows ensure that providers and alums are re-engaged at just the right time, boosting referral volume.
Efficient Intake Processes
With improved workflows and user experience, Embark Behavioral Health's intake coordinators now handle patient inquiries and referrals more efficiently, resulting in fewer duplicate or unnecessary leads.
Enhanced Data Visibility
Leadership now has key KPIs, such as lead attribution, intake process duration, and referral trends, at their fingertips, empowering data-driven decisions.
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