Virtua Health, a not-for-profit healthcare system operating a network of hospitals, surgery centers, physician practices, and a full continuum of services is South Jersey’s largest healthcare provider. A well-recognized health system ranked by U.S. News and World Report, Virtua has received multiple awards for quality, safety, and outstanding work environment and strives to recognize the unique story behind every person they treat.

Led by an involved board and engaged leadership team, the organization is constantly focused on learning how to improve the healthcare journey. With a market positioning of ‘Here for Good,’ Virtua Health embodies a healthcare brand with the consumer in mind, drawing upon a team that acts as one family and cares, not just in the moment, but also about how people feel after they have had a healthcare experience.

As a listening organization, Virtua Health aims to better serve its patients during all the moments that matter, striving to connect patients to the care they need and building on their authentic and transparent brand. With the complexity and demands associated with healthcare delivery today, Virtua Health engages with NRC Health’s Human Understanding™ Program to better deliver the communication and metric capabilities they need to turn their strategic aspirations into action to improve care, enhance performance, and catalyze growth.

Highlights on Outpatient + Magnet Survey Mode Pilot Evaluation:

• 384% growth in online reviews
• 3.89 to 4.53 average on a five-star rating scale on third-party websites
• 13x increase in members of Community Insights panels
• Increase in NPS (Net Promoter Score) numbers from 79.9 to 81.6

Virtua Health supplements consumer feedback with actual utilization when strategizing about retention and loyalty. The healthcare leader also looks at network integrity using its customer relationship-management system, and integrates NRC Health data to track customer retention, incorporating nearly two million calls annually.

Virtua Health’s biggest theme in reviews, feedback, and patient satisfaction is communication, a topic leaders constantly strive to improve. A major strategy Virtua Health focuses on is enhancing communication skills and helping leaders and frontline teams better understand how those moments of human interaction impact every unique person.

While the healthcare system focuses on listening and acting based on consumer feedback, the organization has been able to leverage NRC Health’s Experience, Marketing, and Reputation capabilities to access more voices, engage more patients, and leverage the power of Human Understanding to enable personalized care. Virtua Health marries quality and safety with a high-reliability journey, using NRC Health’s capabilities to unify the efforts of its staff in moving forward as a team.

Using NRC Health’s Reputation capabilities to protect and build online reputation and <a href=”https://nrchealth.com/solutions/market-experience/”>brand awareness</a> while ranking and tracking standings, Virtua Health increased its online reviews by 384.4%. It also increased its average star rating on third-party websites from 3.89 to 4.53.

“People look at comments daily because they’re seeing them cascade into our tools,” says Ryan Younger, Vice President of Marketing. “And the staff are using that in a hands-on way, knowing they are being evaluated based on those scores. What we have done in marketing is dedicated a digital community-engagement specialist to this, and she lives and breathes reviews. If it is a negative review, she will start a service-recovery process, connect with the operational folks involved, and figure out what needs to be done. And if it is a positive one, we are responding to and sharing in daily huddles to celebrate.”

Virtua Health used NRC Health’s Experience and Marketing capabilities to increase its participation in patient panels by 13x, gaining more feedback and more unique perspectives on improving service. This engaged panel took part in more than two dozen comprehensive
studies, including helping to identify needed programs and services, supplying feedback on COVID, and offering insights on how to build relevant marketing campaigns to support cancer, orthopedics, and women’s health.

“What happened to the growth of our Insight panel when we added real-time surveys and purposeful solicitation was astonishing,” says Chrisie Scott, Senior Vice President, and Chief Marketing Officer. “Having access to so many people we could learn from and getting critical feedback and input from them has been extraordinary.”

Scott says they have recruited those who have had a good experience, and those who have not, to take part in Virtua Health’s Community Insights panel known as “Voice. Activated.”

“We cannot get better if everyone is already fan and just says, ‘You’re wonderful, everything is great here.’ We know that is never true anywhere,” Scott says. “The fact that we tap into people who have been critical of us, who did not experience the organization the way we would’ve liked them to, is important because we want those valuable insights
we can learn from.”

Ultimately, Virtua Health made increasing its NPS score a global health-system goal and increased its overall NPS numbers from an already high 79.9 in 2020 to 81.6 by mid-2022. Using NRC Health’s capabilities, Virtua Health can now know its consumers better in order to design experiences that inspire loyalty and create Human Understanding.

“What we have done in marketing is dedicated a digital community engagement specialist to this, and she lives and breathes reviews. If it is a negative review, she will start a service-recovery process, connect with the operational folks involved, and figure out what needs to be done. And if it is a positive one, we are responding to and sharing in daily huddles to celebrate.”

“We’ve created a Human Experience Council with key constituents throughout our organization to have a comprehensive and connected way to build our bench strength in creating the very best experience for each person,” Scott says. “Our mantra is Everybody Always and we have married brand, culture, and high reliability in a meaningful, actionable way. Everyone on the council understands our partnership with NRC Health, has access to them for more specific metrics or learnings, and appreciates the tools and opportunities we now have to help us drive change where needed.”

During recent Executive Rounding at one of the Virtua hospitals, Scott recalled a group of nurses who stopped her to talk about the NRC Health partnership and how grateful they are for the real-time feedback. Nurses talked about wanting the data broken down in a way that they thought would impact what they did—and the thrill of getting access to the information they needed. Scott said that sort of mind shift and access to meaningful data was empowering the people delivering care and creating momentum and excitement to make change happen.

“I think it’s a testament to the partnership and how people show up wanting to solve problems with us,” she says. “Teams can do great things when you equip them with data and tools that bring clarity, rather than guessing by trying different things. It has been a really purposeful step in our “heart wiring” of what matters most.”

“Our mantra is Everybody Always and we have married brand, culture, and high reliability in a meaningful, actionable way. Everyone on the [Human Experience] Council understands our partnership with NRC Health, has access to them for more specific metrics or learnings, and appreciates the tools and opportunities we now have to help us drive change where needed.”