Gravity Helps Dermatology Practice Pivot to Telehealth During COVID-19 Crisis

What can you do when one of the most fundamental and important aspects of your profession, touch, is suddenly considered dangerous? What do you do when shelter-in-place orders force you to reimagine how to provide the care and advice your patients need, not only to relieve discomfort and anxiety but also to diagnose skin cancer?  

For Gravity client Advanced Dermatology and Cosmetic Services (ADCS), it meant transitioning their entire booking process online – almost overnight.  

ADCS is the largest network of medical, surgical and cosmetic dermatology experts in the United States. Every day, people go to ADCS offices for skin cancer screenings and treatments, to get common skin conditions diagnosed and remedied, and to get help dealing with the effects of the environment and aging on their skin.  

Then, the coronavirus pandemic changed the world. 

“How Can We Make Telehealth Work?” 

The one thing it didn’t change was the fact that ADCS patients still needed to be seen. To make this happen, ADCS reached out to us with a broad question: “How can we make telehealth work?”  

Forty-eight hours later, we unveiled a new booking process for telehealth appointments.  

Of course, a lot happened in that 48 hours. It started with ADCS IT and Gravity development teams brainstorming ways to integrate with their system. Because we had just launched an online scheduling system for them before the crisis hit, we had an intimate knowledge of their tech stack and what it would take to get the new system up and running.  

We built iteratively, working closely with their team to ensure we exchanged everything we needed to rapidly add the new functionality. And because our original scheduling system was built in compliance with strict HIPAA regulations, we didn’t have to add any additional complexity to the process. 

Ongoing Developments, Better Business Processes 

Since the successful launch of the new booking system, we’ve helped with a series of upgrades to further enhance the process.  

For instance, by working with ADCS to automate the routing of bookings of confirmed patients directly to their backend booking platform, we helped take about one-third of all appointment requests out of the call center queue. We also helped them rebook all the appointments that had been made prior to the switch, which wasn’t a trivial task.  

At the end of the day, ADCS was extremely happy with the end result and well positioned to keep providing the same level of service and comfort to their customers.  

“Thank you all for the extraordinary effort and rapid turnaround. Great work all around.” – Justin Simoncini, Vice President and Chief Development Officer 

Helping Clients Adapt 

It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies big and small to reevaluate how they do business. As an agency that works with many different types of organizations, we’ve seen firsthand how quick thinking and hard work can help adjust business processes to adapt to new realities.  

If you’re facing a disruption to your business and need help developing a solution, drop us a line. We love a good challenge.