While entering a new and highly competitive pediatric market, our client needed to offer an excellent digital experience. The health system partnered with Perficient to build a frictionless and guided experience that patients and families both need and expect.

Providing a Truly Patient-centered Experience

First, we identified site KPIs, developed target personas, built a digital roadmap, and audited site content. We then built and launched a fully redesigned website on the Optimizely platform, applying our strategic recommendations to optimize the website experience, navigation, and content for each targeted persona. This new digital experience easily guides users to relevant content and necessary actions.  

The fully reimagined site successfully:

• Differentiates the provider as a child- and patient-focused source of care
• Offers a balance between clinical and pediatric content
• Equips family members with information from a trusted digital source of truth
• Creates a clear path to online scheduling with a strong customer service approach
• Eases confusion and frustration around tasks such as billing and insurance
• Communicates additional available services of which patients may not be aware

READ THE FULL SUCCESS STORY: Opening a New Digital Front Door

End-to-end Digital Experience Expertise

Leveraging Perficient’s deep expertise in healthcare and Optimizely, we equipped this leading pediatrics provider with a seamless, easy-to-use digital experience that differentiated them in a highly competitive new market.

Have questions? We help healthcare organizations navigate personalization in healthcare, consumer experiences, and digital marketing with end-to-end support. Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals.

Our consultants bring decades of deep industry and technical experience to help our client’s build strategies for an evolving market and solve complex technical challenges.​ I recently connected with Kaushal Shah, lead business consultant at Perficient to discuss his 20+ years of experience in IT quality, validation, and regulations management.

Thanks for joining me today, Kaushal. I’d love to kick off with hearing more about your role at our global digital consultancy. How are you making a difference for our clients, colleagues, and communities?  

Kaushal enjoying time with family

When I joined Perficient in May of 2020, I brought positivity, dedication, and more than twenty years of software quality and validation experience within healthcare and pharma.

As a lead business consultant in the computer system validation department, I plan, write, implement, and review the computer systems validation plan and protocols within highly regulated industries.

I also manage test management systems and application testing cycles for different client projects. Throughout the project lifecycle, I play a significant role in the requirements, qualification testing, and implementation phases.

I engage with clients to understand the project’s validation, related expectations, and requirements for successful delivery, including:

• User requirements specifications
• Validation plans
• Risk assessment reports
• Functional and technical specifications reviews
• Test plans
• IQ, OQ, and PQ protocol & reports
• Deviation management
• Validation summary reports

I am also involved in updating relevant SOPs, related to quality assessment of software and computer system suppliers, according to applicable business requirements and company procedures.

At Perficient, I am continuing to grow my knowledge and experience in the healthcare industry.

My team acknowledges the sincerity and dedication I put into every responsibility and task assigned to me. We contribute to each other’s growth constantly. We all bring different functional and technical expertise to support one, culturally and professionally diverse team.

Meet More Lead Business Consultants: People of Perficient: Meet Our Lead Business Consultants

What do you value most in your role?

I love being able to use the expertise I have acquired over the years in quality and validation management.

I value the trust and support I receive from my Perficient team and my client teams to successfully validate the system. I am so grateful for Perficient! The opportunity to represent Perficient to clients through my work is very valuable. I get to learn more about the healthcare industry every day.

What made you decide to work for Perficient? What makes you stay and want to do your best work? 

I consider Perficient to be the best in the regulated and technology consulting industry. It has seen exponential growth and still has a lot of potential to continue to grow. The work environment is great. Perficient always values people and ideas.

The company recognizes individuals despite being a large company with a great number of colleagues across the continents. In addition to all this, Perficient has great advancement possibilities. I also have work-life balance at Perficient. This has enabled me to learn Indian classical music- a lifelong dream!

EXPLORE NOW: Culture and Connections

How is a culture of inclusion important to our success?

Due to diverse culture within our teams, we enable our people to exceed our clients’ expectations and grow with Perficient. The factors that enable my teams to achieve this growth include:

• Establishing processes of assisting collaboration across multiple geographies, ensuring that everyone gets the support they need
• Triggering processes to show professionals when opportunities arise
• Enabling them for their next role

READ MORE: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Healthcare

Life Sciences Leaders Turn to Us

Our deep expertise in life sciences and digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, helps transform the R&D process and deliver meaningful value to patients and healthcare professionals. More than 150 ​​pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, and clinical research organizations have counted on our world-class industry capabilities and experience with leading technology innovators.​

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build every day within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT

In the post-pandemic environment, consumers are expecting a more personalized experience. The pandemic exposed long-term, unresolved health disparities, triggering self-reflection across industries (especially in healthcare) to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority.

Our client wanted to take a proactive approach to ensure that marginalized groups were being reached adequately and equitably by its virtual care services. So, we partnered with the health system to develop a strategy, analysis, and new digital approach to make its future-state experience more inclusive for all its patients and their loved ones.

LEARN MORE: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in Healthcare

Repairing Health Disparities Means Better Care for All

We performed comparative analyses and incorporated inclusive content, navigation, and terminology throughout the client’s website. To make the Find-a-Doctor experience more equitable, we added LGBTQ+ clinical subspecialty tags to its provider search filter to help patients readily identify experienced allies. 

This inclusive functionality, resulted in:

• A 312% increase in appointment requests
• A 425% increase in open scheduling
• a 7,000% increase in provider searches that included “LGBTQ”

This new digital approach organically navigates users to the diverse and personalized content that they expect based on analysis-driven best practices.

A well-planned and executed strategy for addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion creates a healthier and more welcoming environment for team members to build patient trust, elevate consumer satisfaction, drive higher-quality care, and reduce health disparities.

READ THE FULL SUCCESS STORY: A Digital Approach to Addressing Health Equity

Digital Experience Solutions

With Perficient’s expertise in healthcare and customer experience solutions, we equipped a leading health system with a solution that reimagined the patient experience with diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind.

Have questions? We help healthcare organizations navigate healthcare strategy and transformation, data and analytics, and solution integration and implementation. Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals.

After nearly two decades with our global digital consultancy, John Ideler, director in our healthcare and life sciences (HLS) business unit, is expanding his role and helping to build a culture of collaboration at Perficient. I recently sat down with him to learn more about his role and how he manages tactical and strategic responsibilities. I loved hearing about how his team is consistently exceeding client expectations with a “can-do” attitude, and I’m sure you will too!

John, Thanks for joining me today. I’d love to kick off with hearing about your career journey with Perficient. How do you impact the company’s culture of collaboration? What does a typical day or project look like?  

John and his wife, Merri

I have been with Perficient for 19 years. In 2002, Perficient acquired the small technology company I was working for in Chicago. Our healthcare practice incubated out of the Chicago team in 2008, originally focusing on data analytics and warehouses. I joined the healthcare team several years later, as I had already been managing multiple healthcare projects. While a part of the healthcare team as a senior project manager, leadership asked me to lead the execution team. This team consists of all project and program managers, scrum masters, product owners and product managers.

The team grew from three project managers up to 22 team members as of today. Last year, Brent Teiken, the general manager of healthcare and life sciences, asked me to expand my role to develop processes and procedures that build a stronger and more robust delivery excellence presence and operational mindset. I initiated the HLS onboarding experience, providing a sense of belonging and community to new hires. I also developed an HLS account dashboard to track the performance of all HLS accounts.

I am focused on building stronger collaboration between HLS colleagues.

My typical day consists of balancing the tactical needs of the execution team with the more strategic role of delivery excellence. The execution team requires:

• 

  John’s three kids, Matthew, Mara, and Mark

  Staffing

• Recruiting
• Career counseling
• Career growth
• Training
• Reviewing the team status
• Any operation support required

In the delivery excellence role, I am usually:

• Onboarding one or two HLS colleagues per week
• Tracking the health of all HLS owned accounts
• Developing new processes
• Assisting in managing daily operations

Since joining the HLS team, I have been managing the delivery of projects and ensuring the HLS execution team is enabled to meet and exceed client expectations. We are accomplishing this through best practices in project management. The HLS team is bringing delivery excellence to each client project.

What energizes you in your daily responsibilities?   

In my role: I like providing value to my team at Perficient. Every day presents a unique challenge to solve.  As Forrest Gump says, “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get”. That sums up my daily routine. There are always unexpected items that need answers, guidance, or action.

On my team: I thoroughly enjoy watching my talented team members consistently exceeding client expectations and going above and beyond to support the execution team. I enjoy my interactions with the team and am energized by their hard work and enthusiasm.

At this company: I am impressed with the entrepreneurial environment at Perficient. We establish opportunities to grow your career with challenging and fulfilling work at every client. I have worked on many projects, with many practices and team members. I am consistently amazed at the “can do” spirit of every team that I have worked with at Perficient.

What has kept you with Perficient for the last 19 years? What continues to excite you about the company, today?

John visiting Pere Marquette State Park

If you would have asked me 19 years ago, when my company was acquired, if I thought I would still be working at Perficient, I probably would have said no. But over the years, I came to appreciate Perficient as a very entrepreneurial place to work.

Perficient greatly appreciates out-of-the-box thinking and new and improved ways to meet client’s needs. 

The size, scope, breadth, and complexity of client work has grown, which provides challenging and rewarding project and program management experiences. Perficient also allows you to be you, and to do your job without a lot of unneeded oversight, provided things are going well.

The most important reason I stay at Perficient is the philosophy that for all projects, Perficient does it with the client, not to the client.

Throughout my 19 years at Perficient, I have enjoyed the comradery of the various practices, teams, and team members I have worked with over the years.  It sounds cliché, but I do get inspired by the hard work and dedication of all Perficient colleagues.

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare experts  understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fifth-largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build everyday within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT

Douglas Stewart, principal of healthcare and life sciences, is utilizing his 20 years of healthcare experience to offer our clients the best solutions to their most complex challenges. We recently connected to discuss how he came to join the Perficient team. I loved hearing more about his background in the healthcare space and what he values most about Perficient’s company culture. I’m sure you will too!

Thank you for joining me today, Doug! I’d love to kick off with hearing more about your background in the healthcare industry and your current role at Perficient. 

Douglas with his family

I started my career in information technology as a programmer, back when Google was new, and Amazon sold books. That led to an opportunity in New York City working in the healthcare and life sciences industries.

Subsequently, I took a role leading projects and systems for the largest health plan in New Jersey. My focus shifted toward the intersection between technology and business outcomes, where I supported organizations in defining goal-oriented needs.

I’ve been responsible for hundreds of work efforts in the payer space. I’ve been the buyer on many occasions. Now I’m using that background to help provide the best solutions based on payer needs to develop deeper client relationships.

My role involves working with sales teams, marketing teams, clients, other principals, and industry analysts to grow our healthcare and life sciences practice. An average day in this role varies based on what’s happening in the industry and what is most important and relevant to our customers. Typically, a day is about:

• One-third ensuring that our offerings address market needs
• One-third understanding problems and explaining how we have solved them, successfully
• One-third thinking about the future to make sure we stay ahead of changes and develop practical solutions

I’m frequently called on to participate in client proposals because of my background. In those circumstances, I shift my complete focus to communicating the best solutions for our clients’ needs.

LEARN MORE: Healthcare Digital Consulting Services

What do you most enjoy about your role and about working at our global digital consultancy?

The people that I work with at Perficient make it a place that’s very enjoyable to work. This company has managed to collect a critical mass of genuine, helpful people who are really interested in solving problems. In my experience, Perficient is a place where people can be authentic and make a difference in a number of ways.

I’ve been involved with many teams throughout my career, and this is the most talented team I’ve been a part of. 

We have conversations about how to preserve our culture as we grow, which tells you a lot about our company.

I think we all value the culture here, and we should do everything in our power to embody it, preserve it, and include our clients in it.

READ MORE: Perficient Giving, Employee Resource Group

What drew you to a career at Perficient? And what motivates you to stay and do your best work?

As I met with leaders at Perficient during my job search, I was truly impressed by the caliber and number of dedicated experts concentrated in a single organization. Since joining the company, I’ve continued to be impressed with the talent pool at Perficient.

My colleagues are passionate about their industry, have innovative perspectives on how to solve problems, and are eager to collaborate to get things done and make exciting things happen. The enthusiasm is contagious!

I’m applying my 20 years of healthcare experience to help clients define their needs.

The people I work with motivate me. I appreciate the people who were involved in the decision to bring me on board last year and the large group of talented people who are looking for their next assignment. Every week I speak with folks that have done really great work to solve common problems. If we can show clients how we can do the same for them – we’ll win.

We’re all really fortunate to be a part of Perficient right now as we grow and align our technical expertise to healthcare and life sciences.  The amount of money spent on healthcare continues to grow exponentially along with our business here, but the health outcomes are getting worse. We can help fix that. Anywhere you have really complex issues to solve and lots of spending, there’s a great market for industry focused technology consulting.

Large, highly regulated, and complex problems are difficult to solve, and there’s an enormous amount of money at stake. Businesses need help, and that’s where we come in. Our clients need to address these problems head on. They are especially interested in practical solutions and stories about how other organizations solved relevant problems. Right now, we’re seeing a significant shift towards:

• Consumerism
• Accurate and modernized clinical platforms
• How Artificial Intelligence will change the ways we work

We are right in the middle of the action, and that’s the perfect place to be.

LEARN MORE: Culture and Connections

How are you seeing DE&I addressed in your work and in the industry? How are you seeing the prioritization of health equity impact the industry and the clients you serve, and how are we approaching our healthcare work through an equity lens?

Professionally, I look at this from a healthcare management perspective. There is a lot of evidence that certain populations need more personalized attention to improve health outcomes. I also can’t help but view this issue from a personal perspective, having a racially diverse household.

I’d like to think that the prioritization of health equity creates passion and opportunity to become more invested in what’s possible.

In the United States, the health equity conversation has happened primarily through the lens of studying social determinants of health, which try to identify why certain population segments have health outcomes that are worse than others (i.e., infant mortality rates and maternity care).

In the life sciences industry, it’s more complex due to the breadth of global organization. It seems, however, like a large focus right now is creating accurate clinical data and ensuring clinical trial diversity requirements. To me, it’s about smarter ways to get products to market quickly while making sure everyone has equal access to those products.

Perficient has major engagements that align directly to these goals, and help drive better health for everyone, especially those who need it the most.

EXPLORE NOW: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in Healthcare

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare experts  understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fifth-largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build everyday within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT

To kick off National Women’s Health Week, we facilitated a discussion with leaders from American Cancer Society and BD on inspiring and supporting proactive women’s health. Our conversation covered several ways the health ecosystem seeks to better understand women’s needs and a meaningful care journey.

The discussion was moderated by Marlana Voerster, senior healthcare & life sciences strategist at Perficient. Experts included:

• Kathleen Goss, PhD, SVP, Partnerships & Capacity Building, American Cancer Society
• Barbara Rhodes, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Home Care DTC, Urology & Critical Care, Becton Dickinson
• Chandra Craven, Senior Healthcare Strategist, DE&I Lead, Perficient

Here are three takeaways from the session:

1. Women are Not a Monolith

Our discussion began around the issue of personalization in healthcare and how to properly segment this audience.

Barbara Rhodes (BR): It’s on us to make sure we’re providing good, comprehensive information that can answer as many questions as possible for as many people as possible. We were serving a woman… who told us “I might be caring for my mom, but I’m a patient too!” We have to make sure that our messaging speaks to her in many different roles.

Chandra Craven (CC): I’ve seen the necessity, but also the lack, of thinking about intersectionality. The one-size-fits-all marketing that’s aimed at women in healthcare is still very much aimed at a demographic that is white, straight, suburbanite, and neither millennial nor over 65.

Intersectionality, which I’m going to give the Oxford Dictionary definition of, is the interconnected nature of social classifications such as race, class, and gender. I’m going to add sexual identity and age here as well. As we marketers build personas, customer journeys, websites, digital marketing campaigns, etc., do we even think about intersectionality? What does that mean for segmenting audiences to address their unique needs?

I was really surprised that when I was giving birth to my daughter, that regardless of my education, income, and access to care, I almost became a part of a growing statistic of 1-in-4 Black women dying in childbirth. That taught me a lot. We need to get rid of the mythology that one woman’s experience addresses all needs.

READ MORE: Chandra Craven, Author at Perficient Blogs

2. Building Trust

While women make 90% of household healthcare decisions, 66% of them feel misunderstood by the healthcare industry. Despite being such a large stakeholder group in healthcare, their unique needs tend to be misunderstood and overlooked. This has understandably resulted in many barriers to trust.

BR: What we have heard from our ladies is that they don’t necessarily want to talk about their issue around urinary incontinence, or other very personal things, until it’s gotten to a certain threshold. This is why we feel the onus is on us to make sure that we’re answering as many questions and providing as much information as we can and making it easily findable. We have systems in place to answer them in a way that lets them feel comfortable asking questions. It’s our job to make sure we’re putting as much information as we can, so that they are aware of their options, because the providers may not know, and patients may not mention it.

Kathleen Goss (GS): This trust issue is such an important one. At the American Cancer Society, we take pride in being the number one trusted source of information for cancer. The key is making it accessible for everyone. Barbara talked about making sure people can find it, but it’s also about making sure people can understand what you’re saying, and that it’s relevant, culturally sensitive, and addresses multiple audiences’ needs. In terms of oncology information, it’s not about the patient alone. We also need to reach the caregiver, loved ones, and people before they have cancer to teach about how to lower risk and prevent the disease. All the way from treatment through survivorship, it’s about meeting people where they are.

CC: When people see people of similar backgrounds as their providers or their caregivers, they find that connection and that trust. I’ve seen this recently in some clinical trial work that we’ve been doing, around recruiting certain groups of people. You have to think about who’s doing the recruiting to which audience, and if the audience will feel trusting of the way they are being recruited and of their recruiter.

LEARN MORE: Marlana Voerster, Author at Perficient Blogs

3. Addressing Health Equity

Every woman’s experience and needs are unique. In the context of closing health equity gaps, our panel explored whether it’s enough to broadcast tailored information across channels.

CC: We need to think much broader. If you are trying to reach groups outside of what you may be a part of, you must start connecting with people from those groups who can tell you where they are. We want to be a part of these communities.

We have a client that I’m really proud of in terms of the work that they did for the LGBTQ+ community, particularly for their trans patients, trans women for example. They were looking at their website and thinking about how they can be more inclusive, virtually. One thing we looked at was adding flags to the name if their provider, so that when a patient used find-a-doctor, they could use a filter to find a LGBTQ+ supportive provider. That’s a big deal for someone in need of care that doesn’t have time to determine whether or not the provider is going to be supportive of them. Knowing someone is trained, experienced, and ready to provide you with care is a big win.

KG: Related to what you just shared, Chandra, we just had a great learning session for primary care providers to talk about cancer for the LGBTQ+ community. There are a lot of issues, like screening or reducing cancer risk for example, where our providers don’t have the toolbox to make sure that their patients feel heard and seen. This takes a partnership among all of us. These are complicated challenges that we all face and barriers to care that women, especially from those populations, have been traditionally excluded. Leveraging best practices, our expertise, our lived experience, and collaboration is so important.

BR: Our legal, regulatory, and medical teams have recently said, “Yeah, we need more language in plainer speech rather than medical lingo that people will understand.” So now, we can work collaboratively with them to try to evolve our language and make it approachable and relevant to them and relevant to their searches.

EXPLORE NOW: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in Healthcare

We invite you to learn more by watching the full recording of our event below.

Raising Visibility and Funding for Women-led Cancer Research

In celebration of this event, we’ve set a goal to raise $5,000 in support of American Cancer Society’s ResearcHERS program, an innovative initiative that elevates women-led cancer research. The American Cancer Society has funded 50 researchers who have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize, and in 2022, Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi became the first woman ACS has funded to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Join the ResearcHERS movement and help us fuel the future of women-led cancer research.

Learn more and make a donation: Perficient Gives + ResearcHERS

Healthcare and Life Sciences Leaders Turn to Us 

Our healthcare experts bring deep understanding and insights around the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm. 

Life sciences organizations’ ability to accelerate transformation is crucial to succeeding in a highly competitive, highly regulated, and quickly-evolving landscape. Life Sciences leaders rely on us for strategic, industry, and technical expertise to achieve their missions in a technologically advancing industry. Our thought leaders are here to support you in achieving business goals and solving your most complex challenges. 

Have questions? Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals. 

Did you know that while women make 90% of household healthcare decisions, 66% of them feel misunderstood by the healthcare industry. Despite being such a large stakeholder group in healthcare, their unique needs tend to be misunderstood and overlooked. Healthcare organizations and life sciences leaders can impact change and improve women’s care experiences through thoughtful segmentation, digital innovation, and much more.

On May 15th at 11:00 AM CT, we will be having a LinkedIn live discussion with leaders from Perficient, GoHealth Urgent Care, American Cancer Society, and BD on inspiring and supporting proactive women’s health. Timed to coincide with National Women’s Health Week, our conversation will explore ways the health ecosystem seeks to better understand women’s needs and to better support a meaningful care journey.

I connected with each of our five incredible panelists to ask what they are excited to discuss on the panel. I loved getting to learn more about their backgrounds and focus areas through their responses, and I’m sure you will too!

RSVP NOW: Save Your Seat for the LinkedIn Live Event

Sarah Arora | LinkedIn 

“I’m looking forward to participating in this panel on women’s health. Women have driven decision-making in healthcare for centuries, and it will be exciting to explore how the industry has not only served them but also let them down in some important ways. I can’t wait to have a robust discussion with my fellow panelists!” – Sarah Arora, Chief Growth Officer at GoHealth Urgent Care

Barbara Rhodes | LinkedIn

“I’m thrilled to participate in Perficient’s May 15th panel discussion exploring ways to support women’s health through digital. It will be especially interesting to discuss the truths about health care consumers and women as caregivers for themselves and their families.

Our recent research has shown that in many instances caregiving is a family affair, including sons, husbands, and fathers along with daughters, sisters, and mothers. I am looking forward to sharing and learning about how we can use digital experiences to inspire and support all these consumers throughout their journey.”- Barbara Rhodes, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Home Care DTC, Urology & Critical Care at Becton Dickinson

Kathleen Goss, PhD | LinkedIn

“I’m really proud to be a panelist for Perficient’s LinkedIn live event on women’s health on May 15th. We’re going to have a great discussion and cover a wide range of topics, but I’m most looking forward to digging into the barriers that women face to get the healthcare they deserve, and they need. Join us! – Kathleen Goss, PhD, SVP, Partnerships & Capacity Building at the American Cancer Society

Chandra Craven | LinkedIn | Blogs

“As a digital healthcare strategist and marketer for over 25 years, I’ve spent my career working to ensure women and marginalized community voices were considered and included in marketing efforts.

I’m excited to be a part of Perficient’s panel discussion on May 15th and look forward to exploring the concepts of intersectionality, segmentation, and how it’s time for marketers to see women not as a monolith but an array of unique experiences.” – Chandra Craven, Senior Healthcare Strategist, DE&I Lead at Perficient

READ MORE: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in Healthcare

Marlana Voerster | LinkedIn | Blogs

“I’m excited to hear how our group of panelists from across the healthcare ecosystem approach and advance proactive women’s health. As a healthcare strategist, I’m passionate about helping organizations define and implement optimized patient journeys.

I look forward to exploring topics such as how women research select care for themselves and their families, what kinds of experiences they are seeking in both digital and physical spaces, and how we as marketers can best support these efforts. This will no doubt lead to an enlightening conversation on May 15^th!” – Marlana Voerster, Senior Strategist at Perficient

EXPLORE NOW: Perficient – Women in Technology

Raising Visibility and Funding for Women-led Cancer Research

In celebration of this event, we’ve set a goal to raise $5,000 in support of American Cancer Society’s ResearcHERS program, an innovative initiative that elevates women-led cancer research. The American Cancer Society has funded 50 researchers who have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize, and in 2022, Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi became the first woman ACS has funded to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Join the ResearcHERS movement and help us fuel the future of women-led cancer research.

Learn more and make a donation: Perficient Gives + ResearcHERS

Healthcare and Life Sciences Leaders Turn to Us 

Our healthcare experts bring deep understanding and insights around the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm. 

Life sciences organizations’ ability to accelerate transformation is crucial to succeeding in a highly competitive, highly regulated, and quickly-evolving landscape. Life Sciences leaders rely on us for strategic, industry, and technical expertise to achieve their missions in a technologically advancing industry. Our thought leaders are here to support you in achieving business goals and solving your most complex challenges. 

Have questions? Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals. 

We empower healthcare organizations by developing effective strategies, implementing pragmatic solutions, and creating exceptional consumer experiences. Our consultants bring decades of deep experience across an array of healthcare settings to help our client’s build strategies for an evolving market and solve complex technical challenges.​ I recently sat down with a few of our healthcare leaders to discuss how they are utilizing their depth of experience in the payer and provider industries to achieve these goals for our clients. 

Thank you for joining me today, Marybeth, Kristina, and Doug! I’d love to start with hearing more about your backgrounds in the payer & provider industries. 

Marybeth Wrabel, Payer Specialist:
Blogs |LinkedIn

Marybeth Wrabel, Payer Specialist: I’m a tenured marketer and digital product management leader with 20 years of experience working for national and international payers. I built my career by following through on promises and going above and beyond for my constituents.

My colleagues quickly began referring to me as a subject matter expert in various aspects of the payer business. 

During my career in the payer space, I got the opportunity to lead a global team of marketers. I developed a program to motivate them to think more strategically in their daily work. More recently, I led a cross functional group of Agile product owners and their respective peers across digital, analytics, marketing, and segmentation.

Kristina Kaufmann, Senior Business
Consultant: Blogs | LinkedIn

Kristina Kaufmann, Senior Business Consultant: I’m a lead business consultant at Perficient. I’m also a registered nurse (RN). Although I no longer provide direct patient care, I will always be a nurse. Prior to joining Perficient, I was an outpatient internal medicine and cardiac nurse for over seven years. Before that, I was a cardiac nurse in the hospital setting for about seven years. It was always such an honor to help save someone’s life, to advocate for patients throughout the continuum of care, or to comfort them during their last moments.

With each nursing shift, I felt like I made a difference and helped change lives for the better.

During my time in the outpatient setting, I was utilized as an expert on new rollouts and implementations. I enjoyed helping my fellow nurses and physicians with new technology. This guided my career towards healthcare technology, where I completed my master’s degree in health informatics and joined Perficient.

Douglas Stewart, Healthcare Principal

Douglas Stewart: I started my career in information technology as a programmer, back when Google was new, and Amazon sold books. That led to an opportunity in New York City working in the healthcare and life sciences industries.

Subsequently, I took a role leading projects and systems for the largest health plan in New Jersey. My focus shifted toward the intersection between technology and business outcomes, where I supported organizations in defining goal-oriented needs.

LEARN MORE: People of Perficient: Meet Marybeth Wrabel, Payer Specialist

Describe your current role at Perficient. What motivates you in your role?

MW: Today, my role as a payer specialist at Perficient gives me an opportunity to help support clients with strategy and delivery. Payers have so many constituents to serve. The strategies, experiences, and messages for each constituent group must be truly unique if you expect to earn their engagement.

The company culture at Perficient is one of openness, collaboration, and respect. I enjoy working on the cross-functional strategic teams where there is mutual respect for different backgrounds, strengths, and contributions.

KK: My current responsibilities at Perficient include clinical subject matter expertise, clinical business analysis, project management, medical terminology specialty, and healthcare strategy. I bring a unique perspective to the company through the lens of an actual provider in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. I’ve been able to help generate new ideas, use cases, and potential solutions to clinically oriented projects and initiatives.

I’m able to help integrate the clinical world with technology and business.

DS: As I met with leaders at Perficient during my job search, I was truly impressed by the caliber and number of dedicated experts concentrated in a single organization. Since joining the company, I’ve continued to be impressed with the talent pool at Perficient.

My colleagues are passionate about their industry, have innovative perspectives on how to solve problems, and are eager to collaborate to get things done and make exciting things happen. The enthusiasm is contagious!

I’m applying my 20 years of healthcare experience to help clients define their needs.

Read More: People of Perficient: Meet Kristina Kaufmann, Senior Business Consultant

What perspectives can you bring into your role based on your background? How has your expertise helped you serve our clients? 

MW: After spending nearly my entire career with payers, I have developed a perspective on many aspects of their business. Payers have much potential to engage with their constituents in new and improving ways.

Achieving this engagement is determined by a payer’s strategic goals and appetite for change. It’s fascinating to see payers and providers around the country shift to integrated delivery models. This shows that there is a desire to impact the entire experience for members from service to payment. This is also an attempt to control costs for highly engaged populations.

There is great opportunity to help payers improve member experiences.

KK: My background gives me a good understanding of what the end user is expecting or needing from a product. I often use my personal experience with clinical workflows to support healthcare related decisions and solutions. I’m able to step back into the shoes of a provider and ask myself, what would help me as a nurse provide higher quality care or complete my tasks more efficiently, so that I can spend more time with my patients?

This has ultimately led to improved virtual health implementations through understanding of healthcare needs and change management.

DS: I’ve been responsible for hundreds of work efforts in the payer space. I’ve been the buyer on many occasions. Now I’m using that background to help provide the best solutions based on payer needs to develop deeper client relationships.

What does the emergence of the quadruple aim and the prioritization of health equity mean to you, as an industry expert? How are you seeing this impact the industry and the clients you serve?

Marybeth Wrabel: I’m proud to work with clients that are forerunners in health equity. These organizations strive to help bridge the gap of systemic health inequity and racial injustice. They have freely shared their findings and challenges obtaining self-reported race and ethnic data, assessing its accuracy from other sources, and even designing a program that meets high validity and reliability standards.

If payers and providers are striving to improve health outcomes, it can’t just address the health outcomes of specific groups. It must include everyone.

KK: Health equity is a critical step in improving the quality of care. If you’re not able to reach certain patient populations or geographic locations, resources and services cannot be utilized properly.

Making health equity a priority, is pushing the needle towards innovative care and digital health through remote monitoring, virtual visits, better communication, and collaboration, helping to close gaps in access, treatment, and patient outcomes.

DS: Professionally, I look at this from a healthcare management perspective. There is a lot of evidence that certain populations need more personalized attention to improve health outcomes. I also can’t help but view this issue from a personal perspective, having a racially diverse household. I’d like to think that the prioritization of health equity creates passion and opportunity to become more invested in what’s possible.

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare experts  understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fifth-largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build everyday within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT

With robust industry expertise, our healthcare team achieves excellence in transforming how the world’s biggest brands connect with consumers and grow their businesses. I recently sat down with one of these experts. Marybeth Wrabel is a lead of payer strategy at Perficient who applies her 20 years of expertise in the payer industry to deliver excellence for our clients.

Marybeth, thank you for joining me today. I’d love to kick off with hearing more about your background in the payer industry. 

Marybeth Wrabel | Payer Specialist

I’m a tenured marketer and digital product management leader with 20 years of experience working for national and international payers. When I was in my mid-twenties, early in my career, a marketing leader saw my potential. She would continuously encourage me to lead initiatives that would put me in a position to grow. I developed confidence in my ability to navigate completely new and uncomfortable situations. I built my career by following through on promises and going above and beyond for my constituents.

My colleagues quickly began referring to me as a subject matter expert in various aspects of the payer business. 

During my career in the payer space, I got the opportunity to lead a global team of Marketers. I ensured I was able to make genuine connections with each of them and bring them together as a team. I developed a program to motivate them to think more strategically in their daily work. They built a better brand through strategic thinking and growing capabilities within their respective regions. One of them told me, “We live all around the world, but you never make us feel that way.”

More recently, I led a cross functional group of Agile product owners and their respective peers across digital, analytics, marketing and segmentation. I was responsible for strategy and delivery. That team is one of the best I’ve ever been a part of. Through mutual trust and strong communication, we helped each other grow in areas where we didn’t have extensive expertise. I helped many in the data and analytics group to learn the payer business, and I learned a lot more about data, technology and delivery.

EXPLORE NOW: Marybeth Wrabel, Author at Perficient Blogs

How did you come to work for Perficient? What makes you stay and want to do your best work? 

I got an offer from a payer an hour before Perficient made its offer. I chose Perficient for the variety of work and opportunity to grow in my career. The ability to learn continuously is important to me. Additionally, I will have the opportunity to work in provider and medical technology as our clients think strategically about breaking down silos. From the consumers perspective, the healthcare experience is connected. They don’t see the silos that businesses create for themselves. Healthcare consumers do not think of payers without thinking of providers, and they do not pursue the medical technology they need without thinking of how a payer can help them attain it.

Describe your current role at Perficient. How are you applying your experience with payers to serve our clients? 
Today, my role as a payer specialist within Perficient’s healthcare practice gives me an opportunity to help guide sales opportunities and support clients with strategy and delivery. Payers have so many constituents to serve. The strategies, experiences, and messages for each constituent group is truly unique if you expect to earn their engagement. The company culture at Perficient is one of openness, collaboration, and respect. I enjoy working on cross-functional strategic teams. There is mutual respect for different backgrounds, strengths, and contributions.

After spending nearly my entire career with payers, I have developed a perspective on many aspects of their business.

Payers have much potential to engage with their constituents in new and improving ways.

Achieving this engagement is determined by a payer’s strategic goals and appetite for change. It’s fascinating to see payers and providers around the country shift to integrated delivery models. This shows that there is a desire to control the entire experience for members from service to payment. This is also an attempt to control costs for highly engaged populations. There is great opportunity to help payers improve member experiences in this area.

EXPLORE NOW: Empowering our People: A Culture of Collaboration

After decades of experience in the payer industry, what continues to excite you about your role?

I value the variety of the challenges that we solve for our clients, at every stage from pre-sales to delivery. Working for payers, I would focus exclusively on the challenges directly impacting my segments and constituents. In my role at Perficient, I get the opportunity to apply my expertise more broadly. On my team, I value the different perspectives and deep expertise my colleagues apply to their work.

After two decades at payer companies, I’m pleased that I am able to utilize my experience to help my company and my clients grow. It’s common to see people with a long tenure at payers. Because of this, actively introducing new ideas is valuable. I enjoy listening to what my talented colleagues have to say while brainstorming solutions.

How are you seeing the shifting focus onto the quintuple aim affect the payer industry and the clients you serve?
I’m proud to work with clients that are forerunners in health equity. These organizations strive to help bridge the gap of systemic health inequity and racial injustice. They have freely shared their findings and challenges obtaining self-reported race and ethnic data, assessing its accuracy from other sources, and even designing a program that meets high validity and reliability standards.

If payers and providers are striving to improve health outcomes, it can’t just address the health outcomes of specific groups. It has to include everyone.

LEARN MORE: The Emergence of the Quintuple Aim

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare experts  understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build every day within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT

For medical device organizations, consumer experience is more critical now than ever before. After all, consumers are flooded with an overwhelming amount of information on products and new technologies. Medical device firms that successfully cut through the noise are the leaders that build strong relationships and enable users to make informed decisions.

Fortunately, there are tried and true solutions to accomplish these goals. We partner with medical device leaders, bringing end-to-end healthcare, life sciences, commerce, customer experiences, and digital marketing expertise to the table. This blend enables our clients to build relationships with end users and get the right information to the right people at the right time.

Empowering Patient Independence With an Enhanced Commerce Experience

A global medical technology company wanted to expand the online purchasing experience for its successful external catheter product to empower patients and caregivers to make informed decisions for better health outcomes. To enable this, the client needed a consumer-focused commerce experience.

We built this by:

• Conducting stakeholder interviews to uncover targeted personas and their needs
• Developing journey maps for each persona’s unique journey to identify actionable insights around key moments of influence
• Building a commerce website with a guided selling approach to help patients determine if the product is right for them
• Optimizing the site design to make the checkout process intuitive, concise, and tailored to the target audience

Driven by actionable, persona-based insights, this work resulted in a best-practice purchasing experience that seamlessly guides end users, caregivers, and physicians to the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.

READ THE FULL SUCCESS STORY: Empowering Patient Independence With an Enhanced Commerce Experience

Building a Cohesive Global Customer Experience With Salesforce Marketing Cloud

A leading medical device firm needed to maintain a cohesive brand experience and streamline communications, as it was expanding globally. Our client needed personalized, targeted messages in local languages and in accordance with legal regulations.

We super-charged our client’s country- and domain-specific marketing efforts by:

• Implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud and managing all of the client’s global instances,
• Configuring, launching, and optimizing personalized, behavior-based communication journeys
• Equipping the client’s leadership to optimize and scale the program as needs evolve

Our client is now enabled to utilize Salesforce Marketing Cloud to its fullest potential, on a global scale.

The metrics from this campaign consistently exceeded our client’s goals and strengthened retention with a global, targeted, and strategic brand message.

Customers can now easily re-order supplies through automated communications, improving their overall care experience. The client also won back lapsed customers and lessened the volume of inbound calls to customer support.

READ THE FULL SUCCESS STORY: Building a Cohesive Global Customer Experience With Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Empowering Solutions for Healthcare and Life Sciences

Traditionally focused on manufacturing, medical device companies realize the need to drive end-to-end customer value that includes more than products. This is accomplished through holistic solutions that include services, data intelligence and integrated product offerings to drive new revenue streams, reduce costs and prevent hospital admissions.​

Perficient leads medical device companies through this opportunity by helping the enterprise reinvent core business strategies for evolving markets and implementing business-growing solutions that combine data intelligence, commerce/logistics strategy, platform integration, interoperability, and more. Our clients value us as a single strategic partner driving value throughout the consumer lifecycle.

READ MORE: Top 8 Trends Driving the Medical Device Industry in 2023

With deep expertise in life sciences and digital technologies, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy. More than 150 ​​pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, and clinical research organizations have counted on our world-class industry capabilities and experience with leading technology innovators. Contact us to learn more.

Today, it is more important than ever for healthcare organizations to offer an excellent digital experience. In an industry that is highly regulated, understaffed, and still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, David Perkins, account manager, is striving to enable healthcare organizations (HCOs) to provide better patient care. I recently sat down with him to learn more about his passion for supporting his healthcare clients. We also discussed what it takes to thrive at Perficient as an account manager and what he values most about his teams.

Hi David, Thanks for speaking with me today! I’d love to start with hearing more about the facets of your role as an account manager at Perficient. How are you impacting our culture, growth, and clients? 

David gardening with his now-5-year-old twins, Jayne and Ryan

As an account manager, my role is to represent and effectively communicate Perficient’s end-to-end capabilities and services. I also work to understand my client’s current challenges to qualify new support opportunities. This role involves a lot of internal coordination. I work with our team of subject matter experts to finalize pricing and deliverables. A typical day in this role likely includes the following:

• Lots of coffee
• Updates to internal records
• Project creations
• Team and client calls
• A diet Coke
• Contract writing & approval efforts
• Pursuit coordination
• Prospecting emails
• Sales training

In a company culture, positivity is very important to me. I try to have an upbeat and cheerful presence on my internal and external calls. This certainly puts me in the position to act as a “hype-man” for my clients and get subject matter experts excited to participate — LET’S GO!

I am also a culture ambassador within our healthcare and life sciences business unit. Our group works to better understand and promote our employee’s motivations.

Perficient’s healthcare and life sciences sales team is made up of highly motivated top performers. It is really a great team, and I’m glad to be a part of it!

To help my team maintain its momentum, I strive to stay focused on my individual sales goals, aid my managers, and share and assist in any way I can.

I help my clients understand what new systems and technologies are available and consider which options make the most sense. Some of my long-time clients have been working with me for more than seven years. I have built a solid relationship and foundation of trust with my clients. These relationships have given me an understanding of my clients’ needs and challenges and helped me grow and expand our services into different departments of the organization.

SEE MORE: People of the Healthcare BU

How did you decide to join Perficient, and how have you since been enabled for continuous growth? 

I came to Perficient through an acquisition of a smaller agency called MedTouch. Once the acquisition was finalized, I immediately saw the advantages in expanding my technical knowledge at the more mature digital agency, and I have been enabled to do so.

I am grateful to be working at Perficient. I have the opportunity to learn and sell many different technologies and services, and I have access to so many great minds and applications.

LEARN MORE: Empowering Our People

What do you value most about your role supporting our healthcare clients? 

I enjoy my role and the opportunity to HCOs. Many are operating with small, underfunded teams and are still managing the effects from the COVID-19 pandemic.

What I value most about my role and what I want to do with my career is improving operations and patient experiences for HCOs so that they can focus on providing better patient care.

Many HCOs need help, in many forms. They are widely underfunded and understaffed. Prior to working in healthcare, I worked in digital marketing for a large e-commerce company. It was a night-and-day difference around the available budget for digital transformation and advertising compared to most healthcare organizations. Seeing these ongoing challenges in this industry has helped me focus on what I want to do with my career.

EXPLORE NOW: Healthcare Digital Consulting Services / Perficient

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare experts  understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build every day within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

SEE MORE PEOPLE OF PERFICIENT

Today, patients have more options than ever before. There is more content and research easily accessible to consumers. Medical device organizations need to cut through the noise to make their communications impactful. Three in four people say they want to have the same experience in healthcare that they receive from other businesses. Enabling a tailored and relevant customer experience, on par with other industries, is a business imperative for medical device organizations.

As a medical device organization rapidly expanding into the global market, our client faced an additional challenge. They needed to maintain a consistent global brand message in addition to meeting consumers rising expectations for an exceptional personalized experience. To help our client address this, we super-charged its country- and domain-specific marketing efforts by implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud to build, execute, and optimize compliant, personalized communication journeys.

READ MORE: The ROI of Personalization in Healthcare

Delivering an Excellent Brand Experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

We implemented Salesforce Marketing Cloud with Einstein Analytics, Journey Builder, and Datorama and were tasked to manage all the client’s global instances. This marketing stack accelerates customer acquisition, onboarding, engagement, and retention by enabling streamlined customer communications, and consistent branding. It also appeals to lapsed customers.

Enabled by Marketing Cloud to send personalized communications, we managed meaningful end-to-end email and SMS journeys triggered by customer behavior with standardized, pre-approved messages and optimized, targeted content that meets patient needs at various stages:

• Transactional: Communications involving orders, shipments, and subscriptions, tracking information, and a reorder button
• Commercial: Communications including the marketing of new devices, lead nurture, and newsletters featuring patient stories
• External data (U.S. only): Communication journeys triggered by data from the client’s patient app, such as detected health risks and monthly health trends

We built institutional knowledge and a dedicated team of experienced resources that equip the management, optimization, and scale of this program as our client’s needs evolve.

Our client is now enabled to utilize Marketing Cloud to its fullest potential, globally.

Campaign metrics consistently exceeded our client’s goals, strengthening retention with unified global branding, optimized target group communication journeys, and a strategic engagement cadence.

Automated communications keep customers better informed about their health and they can easily re-order supplies, improving their overall health and care experience. The client was also able to win back lapsed customers and lessen the volume of inbound calls to customer support.

LEARN MORE: Top 8 Trends Driving the Medical Device Industry in 2023

READ THE FULL SUCCESS STORY: Building a Cohesive Global Customer Experience With Salesforce Marketing

End-to-end Healthcare and Life Sciences Expertise

Leveraging Perficient’s deep expertise in healthcare, life sciences, and Salesforce, we equipped this health system with a brand message powered by Salesforce Marketing to build, execute, and optimize compliant, personalized, behavior-based communication journeys.

Have questions? We help healthcare organizations navigate personalization in healthcare, and consumer experiences and digital marketing with end-to-end support. Contact us today, and let’s discuss your specific needs and goals.