World-class care that is close to home

AdventHealth, formally known as Adventist Health System, is a large on-profit healthcare system located in nine states across the United States. Headquartered in Almonte Springs, Florida, AdventHealth is one of the largest non-profit health systems in the nation. AdventHealth operates in 50 hospitals across the US, serving more than five million patients every year.

Pre-pandemic, AdventHealth used a simple event management and registration app to organize community events. Beyond featuring a complicated user-interface, the event management app was not Salesforce-native, causing major issues with any integrations. The event organizers and Salesforce administrators (“admins”) were required to manually input data, a time-consuming process often ending with inaccurate data. The team also struggled to build viable custom processes to support the large volume of patient engagement.

When the need arose to organize COVID vaccinations for 80,000 employees and volunteers, the current solution was no longer a reliable or viable option. The health system needed an app that was Salesforce-native with specific scheduling functionality to allow the department to create and track two vaccine appointments per patient. The complex operation would require over 160,000 appointments to be created, tracked, and reported on.

Kevin Howell, Director of CRM and Digital Health for AdventHealth Information Technology, knew it wouldn’t be easy to find the right solution for the volume of care: “We typically tend to break vendors when we stand them up with our volume, which is quite a large system with a presence in 10 states and over 50 hospitals.”

“With the current solution, I had to use a lot of custom code, and so anytime there was a problem, I had to pull in a developer to troubleshoot complex issues,” he said. The team knew they needed to start the vendor selection process as soon as possible.

AdventHealth started the search for a new vendor and discovered Blackthorn Events through their Salesforce partners. Howell felt confident to explore the solution due to the positive feedback from Salesforce. “Blackthorn being one of Salesforce.org’s partners of the year really speaks volumes,” said Howell.

One of the major challenges AdventHealth faced was a tight implementation timeline. The team was looking to have a solution implemented in just two weeks. The Blackthorn team promised, and delivered, on the aggressive timeline. “It was very, very smooth…a few clicks and we were off and running,” Howell said.

The FDA approved the first vaccine on December 11. AdventHealth began scheduling appointments within 48 hours.

Once the application was implemented, the process for employees and volunteers was simple and intuitive. The AdventHealth staff and volunteers received an email invitation to register for their vaccination. The email contained a unique link specific to the attendee, ensuring the right people were scheduled to receive the vaccine. With just one click, patients were taken to an event landing page with their vaccination date and time options, ensuring easy access to schedule the most convenient time-slot.

Since each invitation contained a unique link, the patient’s information was pulled from their existing attendee record in Salesforce and used to pre-fill the registration form.

The attendee then received a confirmation email with a unique QR code. When the patient arrived for their scheduled vaccine appointment, a staff member would check them in by simply scanning the patient’s QR code, using Blackthorn’s Mobile Check-In App. Scanning the code switched the attendee’s status from “Registered” to “Attended” in real-time, allowing the admin to confirm whether the attendee actually showed up for their appointment.

The real-time data was critical for contact tracing as the record had a timestamp for each vaccination. Getting reliable registration data early also allowed the hospital to forecast the necessary amount of supplies, number of vaccines, and scheduled staff.

The process was fully automated after the attendee was scanned, enabling administrators to send follow-up surveys and information about the second vaccine appointment without any manual effort. Organizers now have access to a user-friendly interface where they can send invitation-only emails and easily view accurate, reliable patient data.

The scheduling and completion of the initial round of vaccines for employees and volunteers using Blackthorn Events was so successful that AdventHealth opened up the system in a few additional markets to the entire public. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. “I’ve been getting pictures from local sites where people are just so excited to get the vaccine,” said Kevin Howell. “You know, every now and then in healthcare IT you get to work on a project that really makes a difference, and so this is one that resonated with us…we were able to see the faces of people that you were making a difference for so it’s been amazing.”

AdventHealth is continuing to evolve the use-cases for Blackthorn Events as their primary event management and marketing tool. The team is looking to expand its use for educational seminars, employee training, and community events for their 50+ hospitals, urgent care clinics, labs, imaging centers, and more. Blackthorn is so proud to partner with such an incredible organization that works so hard to keep the public engaged and informed about their health.