When Virta Health was established in 2015, its mission was ambitious yet clear: To reverse type 2 diabetes through nutrition and lifestyle change.
Fast-forward to today, and Virta Health now partners with more than 350 large employers, health plans, and government organizations. This exponential growth, driven by partnerships with companies offering their services as an insurance benefit, brought both exciting opportunities and significant operational challenges.
The Challenge: Scaling with precision and personalization
As Virta Health grew and expanded, so did the complexities of its operations. Their care teams faced the task of managing an increasing volume of members while ensuring each interaction was consistent, personalized, and efficient. The need for a robust system to streamline communication and documentation became evident.
“Now we have a system for creating and updating the messaging our coaches use as a framework to communicate with our members, with personalization top of mind.”
Kristin Hullett, Care Operations Senior Associate at Virta Health
“Before TextExpander, there was less uniformity with how coaches responded to members, which was becoming increasingly difficult given the increased workload for coaches,” said Kristin Hullett, Care Operations Senior Associate at Virta Health. “Now we have a system for creating and updating the messaging our coaches use as a framework to communicate with our members, with personalization top of mind.”
The Search: Finding tools to improve efficiency and personalization
In their quest for a solution, Virta Health discovered TextExpander. The tool was chosen for its ability to enhance their member communication and note-taking processes, particularly for their care provider teams and health coaches. TextExpander can be seamlessly used with Virta’s proprietary EHR system, enabling the team to efficiently create checklists and draft workflows to ensure they were communicating the right messages at the right time.
The Implementation: Embedding efficiency into daily operations
The care operations team at Virta Health set out to build frameworks for the many scenarios the care team regularly faced. That’s when Hullett, who started as a Dietitian, became interested in improving efficiency and streamlining member communications. She transitioned to supporting care operations, where TextExpander had already been implemented but wasn’t fully optimized.
Collaborating with TextExpander’s customer success team, Hullett set out to update their processes through response frameworks that their care team employees use to serve their members daily, allowing them to focus on efficiency and personalization of their messages to better meet our members where they are on their health journey. “Within TextExpander, we created a checklist to assist us in onboarding members. Each team member follows this to ensure consistent engagement,” Hullett explained.
The Results: Quantifiable and qualitative gains
The impact of TextExpander at Virta Health has been nothing short of transformative:
- 359 organizational members using TextExpander
- 69,000 hours saved organization-wide
- 24 working days on average saved per person annually
- 4 million Snippets expanded in one year
These numbers only tell part of the story. The qualitative improvements have been equally significant. “Because we are a virtual company, most of our member communication is in chat. We need ways to be both efficient and accurate with that, otherwise it would take so much more time. That’s where TextExpander comes in,” says Hullett.
“Our whole team is on the same page. TextExpander is a big library that our coaches can use to find and leverage information so we can be consistent in our answers to common questions and workflows.”
Kristin Hullett, Care Operations Senior Associate at Virta Health
The most impactful part about TextExpander, according to Hullett, is the consistency and training across the whole team: “Our whole team is on the same page – TextExpander is a big library that our coaches can use to find and leverage information so we can be consistent in our answers to common questions and workflows.”
Virta Health + TextExpander: A partnership for progress
Since adopting TextExpander in 2017, Virta Health has been a prime example of the power of optimizing processes. With 359 organizational members utilizing over 4 million snippets in the past year, they’ve saved an impressive 69,000 hours, translating to roughly 24 working days per member annually. This partnership has empowered Virta Health to focus on what they do best—reversing type 2 diabetes, sustainable weight loss, and changing lives through innovative healthcare solutions.
As Virta Health continues to embrace TextExpander and other technology to enhance efficiency and support organizational growth, Kristin shares that her care team will continue to grow and optimize their processes into the future: “As we scale, we’re always looking to automate repetitive and manual tasks so our Health Coaches can spend more time working with members to create behavior change and personalize their experience.”
Digital healthcare requires digital solutions
Want to save time on patient communication and searching for the right responses?
