Sutherland’s Virtual Patient Care Solution Boosts Revenue for One of the Largest Physical Therapy Providers

Industry: Healthcare | Services: Business Process as a Service

Client Overview

Headquartered in New York, the healthcare provider client is the largest physical therapy provider in the Northeastern U.S., with over 200 clinics across five states, 600+ therapists, and 35,000 referring doctors. The network supports more than 2 million annual patient visits, offering a wide range of services in areas such as Physical Therapy, Hand & Occupational Therapy, AposHealth, Spine Physical Therapy, Orthopedic Physical Therapy, Women’s Physical Therapy, Athletic Performance, Athletic Training, Post-Discharge Exercise Programs, Ergonomic Work Solutions, Injury Prevention for Athletes, and Fitness Center.

The Challenge

The Need for a Centralized, Scalable, and Quality-driven CX Model to Sustain Growth

To scale effectively, the client wanted to prioritize their patient experience across their in-clinic locations. However, the client was also experiencing several customer experience (CX) operational challenges in their self-implemented virtual patient service channel, which were impacting brand perception.

• Staffing Gaps: Difficulty recruiting and managing skilled healthcare customer service representatives to meet the increasing demands of their patients.
• Decentralized Operations: Uncoordinated healthcare customer service representatives were working remotely, resulting in reduced efficiency and consistency.
• Non-Standardized Patient Interactions: Lack of professional appearance standards and virtual backgrounds impacted brand perception.
• CX Workflow Inefficiencies: Absence of standardized processes and quality management limited performance visibility.
• Ineffective Communication: The unstructured POD model hindered coverage and collaboration.

Sutherland Solution

Sutherland’s Transformation: Deploy Custom Patient Experience Solutions That Meet Customers’ Demand

Sutherland established a dedicated Center of Excellence (CoE) to transform the client’s patient experience across clinics —combining healthcare expertise, process design, and digital CX delivery. With the transformation value it delivered to the client during the first two years of the strategic engagement, it was also chosen as the preferred CX partner to manage their Virtual Patient Care Coordinators.

Overall, Sutherland implemented the following teams of experienced healthcare customer service representatives at their locations:

1. Healthcare Customer Service Team deployed to support the large volume of patient calls to schedule appointments through multi-channel communication channels, including Inbound/Outbound voice, chat, and SMS.
2. Virtual Patient Experience Coordinators to support the front desk workflows of the clinics that include handling of patient check-ins, scheduling, and managing clinic overflow calls.

Overall, some of the key components of Sutherland’s patient experience solutions included:

• Brand-Consistent Experience: Introduced professional uniforms with the client’s logo on top and virtual backdrops to reinforce trust and brand alignment.
• Optimized Workflows: Implemented structured POD coverage, enabling real-time performance tracking and improved communication.
• Data-Driven Oversight: Introduced robust reporting dashboards for complete transparency across patient touchpoints and interaction channels.
• Quality Management Framework: Embedded quality monitoring and continuous feedback loops to drive ongoing improvement.

The Outcome

From Fragmented Customer Service Delivery to an Integrated Virtual Care Patient Experience Model

Sutherland’s integrated virtual care model bridged staffing gaps, improved visibility across patient touchpoints to ensure high-quality interactions, both in-clinic and virtual, and positively impacted revenue.

Sutherland’s virtual assistance and the existing front desk workflows unlocked seamless appointment management and greater overall patient satisfaction.

By merging human expertise with digital scalability, the client experienced significant improvement in several metrics, including a substantial improvement in virtual session attendance, with missed sessions reduced to below 5%. Sutherland helped the client achieve consistently fewer than 15% unscheduled cases. It also consistently achieved more than 8% of the total co-pay balance collection target, while achieving a patient experience star point rating of 4.9/5. The productivity of staff improved through the implementation of standardized workflows and enhanced performance visibility.

This transformation helped the client strengthen revenue performance, reduce administrative burden, and deliver consistently high-quality patient experiences across all clinics.