The Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE) operates from a simple premise: coordinated information delivers better patient care. The company’s technology securely moves data among more than 50,000 health providers. With information following the patient, IHIE’s services reduce medical redundancies and improve the speed, efficiency, and quality of healthcare. IHIE serves the largest and broadest participant community in the nation. Hospitals, physicians, laboratories, payers, and other health service providers across Indiana and neighboring states leverage the platform to make better decisions that improve patient health. 

Operating at the intersection of patient care, digital health, and payment reforms means IHIE has no time for technical glitches or downtime. People’s lives depend on it. Yet the team struggled knowing how quickly client issues were resolved and how. IHIE turned to Codescience Technologies for a data diagnosis.

The Challenge

When IHIE clients submitted issues or inquiries, the Customer Relationship and Help Desk teams opened cases within Salesforce. However, staff often failed to update records or close cases timely. This left management with an inability to report on support activity. They lacked accurate data for important metrics like number of active cases, processing time, solution delivery, and client history. IHIE had an in-house team of Salesforce administrators, but a backlog of work created limited time for exploring solutions or developing the technical expertise needed to fix the issue. With a growing client base caring for more than 15 million patients, IHIE needed to fix their service data challenges quickly.

The Solution

IHIE sought assistance from Codescience Technologies, which originally implemented Salesforce for the company three years earlier. IHIE wanted cases updated and closed quicker. Codescience proposed an automated reminder to case owners. Using a new feature from Salesforce’s Winter ’20 release, the Codescience team developed a Process Builder flow on a schedule. The flow queried records daily that were open for 14 days or more without action. The system then sent an email alert and Chatter notification to the case owner requesting a status update. The automated communication immediately produced an uptick in case closures and processing efficiency.

The Results

Codescience Technologies prescribed the right solution. IHIE experienced internal benefits just like the ones it delivered externally – improved communication, more thorough information for decision making, and faster speeds. 

Streamlined Communication – prior to the fix, the Customer Relationship and Help Desk teams often lacked knowledge on the true status of a case or who was working toward a resolution. When each team thought the other owned an issue, neither group moved the case to the finish line and service suffered. With automated alerts, case owners were prompted for updates, which ensured nothing fell through the cracks. The teams worked better together to finish cases for improved customer service.  

Detailed Case Logs – case histories provide valuable information on how individual inquiries get resolved, but more importantly, paint a broader picture of overall client issues and product/service opportunities. Before the solution implemented by Codescience Tech, cases often lacked thorough information. The team generated data on when cases were opened and why, but failed to complete the narrative as the case progressed. The new flow created more frequent updates, which provided a more complete representation of each case. Used collectively, these improved case histories generated new sales leads, IHIE system enhancements, accountability, and service trainings designed for a better client experience. 

Improved Efficiency – the scheduled flow eliminated manual work in multiple ways. First, with more thorough case information, the flow paved the way for a simplified process of generating Opportunities without keying information twice. The teams could stop relying on memory for case updates with the system generating alerts for them. The automation resulted in more action focused on resolving issues faster.