Kyruus Blog

This was originally published on Greystone.Net's blog, GreyMatters, on May 19. The past four years, Kyruus has conducted a survey of 1,000 healthcare consumers to understand how they search for, select, and schedule appointments with healthcare providers. While the most recent report revealed early signs that the COVID-19 pandemic was changing consumer preferences for accessing care, a year into the pandemic we wanted to poll consumers again to gain a deeper understanding of its impact on their decision making.

Last week, the CDC reported that over 40% (142M) of Americans had received at least one dose and 30% (98M) had been fully vaccinated. While this is certainly worth celebrating, particularly as numbers continue to rise, it is worth digging into how these numbers are rising across demographics and in particular, races. For example, of those who reported their race/ethnicity to the CDC*, nearly two-thirds were White (65%), 11% were Hispanic, 8% were Black, 5% were Asian, 1% were American Indian or Alaska Native, and <1% were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Additionally, 9% reported multiple or “other.”

This blog was originally published on AWS.com on April 21. The last few months have brought a lot of highs: the approval of multiple COVID-19 vaccines, the vaccination of more than 86 million Americans, and an overall decline in cases nationally. At Kyruus, we have celebrated the success of our health system customers in facilitating vaccine access, who through our partnership, have scheduled over 400,000 vaccine appointments.

Last month, we invited Mike Dozier, VP Chief Information Officer at Ochsner Lafayette General, and Chris Castellano, VP of Customer Experience Channels at Banner Health, for a discussion on using the vaccine rollout to rebuild consumer relationships.

There is little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly reshaped the delivery of care in the United States. We have seen health systems rapidly deploy technologies that previously lacked broad adoption, like virtual care and chat assistants, seemingly overnight. However, we have also seen consumers, hungry for information about COVID-19 and available healthcare resources, eagerly adopt these methods of accessing care.

While its effect has varied across different types of organizations, the coronavirus pandemic has had an extensive impact on all U.S. health systems. Even though many believe COVID-19 is “kinder” to children than adults, children’s hospitals have faced their own unique challenges, as parents and caregivers seek safe physical and mental health care for minors. To look at the impact of COVID-19 on these types of organizations, Kyruus held a virtual forum series last month featuring Seth Bokser, M.D., a Pediatric Hospitalist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Benioff Children’s Hospital and Clinical Professor at the UCSF Department of Pediatrics; and Jennifer Magaziner, Senior Director of Strategy and Digital Innovation at Boston Children’s Hospital.