Case Study: St. Luke’s Health System saves 5-7 hours a day with MEDITECH patient portal self-scheduling

St. Luke’s Health System Saves Schedulers 5-7 Hours per Day Through Self-Scheduling of COVID-19 Vaccinations

St. Luke’s Health System, a 267-bed not-for-profit healthcare provider in Duluth, MN, faced an overwhelming surge of calls when it announced COVID-19 vaccine availability—its 672 phone lines were tied up within 30 minutes. To address the scheduling bottleneck, the health system turned to MEDITECH’s Patient and Consumer Health Portal, including its Direct Booking feature, to help manage vaccine appointments more efficiently.

MEDITECH enabled St. Luke’s to offer self-scheduling for eligible patients, automatically verifying demographics, insurance, forms, and age-based eligibility while still keeping options open for patients without portal access. The results were significant: scheduling staff saved about five to seven hours per day, 150 daily appointments booked out in hours, the second week filled in just eight minutes, portal enrollment grew from 27,000 to over 55,000, and St. Luke’s reported zero wasted vaccines to date.

St. Luke’s Health System

Clark Averill

Director, Information Technology