The Situation: Addressing Major Comms Challenges in Healthcare

Major issues affecting Excela Health (similar to those of the broader healthcare industry) included:

• A highly disparate workforce. With a coverage area including more than 100 locations, Excela Health provides inpatient hospital care, outpatient services, home care, and hospice.
• A non-deskbound workforce. 80% of their employees are deskless, which left email communication and consumption of company-related communications largely unread.
• A multi-generational workforce. While only 20% of Excela Health’s employees were Millennials at the time that they adopted theEMPLOYEEapp, they predicted that population would double by the end of 2020.
• Ineffective physician communication. With a large and mobile medical staff, Excela faced increasing challenges to meet the communication needs of an increasingly diverse physician population.

Excela Health & theEMPLOYEEapp Successes

After reviewing several solutions available, theEMPLOYEEapp was selected as the mobile solution that would allow the organization to quickly and effectively address its challenges. In a short timeframe post launch, Excela achieved a number of key results:

• Today, 94% of Excela Health rates patient safety as either excellent, very good or acceptable. That’s an increase from 75% in 2012. Excela considers this a key metric in measuring employee engagement, which was partially driven by increased communications through the Excela Mobile App.
• Tactics of the strategic communications plan, including the use of theEMPLOYEEapp, seem to have had a ripple effect on other metrics including turnover rate (YTD: 11.5% on a goal of 13.5%) and perception of teamwork within units (top quartile in the nation).
• The Internal Communications surrounding the launch of the Excela Mobile App won the Silver award in the Employee Communication Program entry category for the 34th Annual Healthcare Advertising Awards.

About Excela Health

Excela Health, a leading provider of advanced medical care in Pennsylvania, employs more than 735 physicians and allied health professionals in 35 clinical specialties and has more than 4,900 employees and 797 volunteer.

Learn more at excelahealth.org.