When it comes to communicating with both loved ones and businesses, many surveys have suggested that people would much rather do so via text than phone calls.
Yet this preference may not be as universal as it seems. At Oscar, our data has shown that, for a significant portion of our members, a phone call, not messaging, is the preferred mode of communicating with providers. That’s because, for many of them, phone consultations feel both more immediate and more personal.
On the other hand, there are also clear unique advantages to messaging in virtual care. It allows patients to engage privately from any setting — whether at work or in a quiet coffee shop — while empowering providers to support patients more efficiently.
Additionally, messaging threads serve as both conversation and medical record. This structure lends itself to easier administrative automation through AI-driven tools, such as intake, documentation, and order generation. In particular, text-based consultations are well-suited to AI-driven intake, enabling automated agents to efficiently gather initial patient information such as symptoms and severity before a provider joins the conversation.
Given the relative benefits of phone calls and messaging, Oscar’s Virtual Care tech team wondered: Could we bridge the gap between asynchronous messaging and real-time responsiveness to transform the experience not just for members, but for providers as well?
To that end, we launched Live Chat for our Virtual Urgent Care (VUC) service, a critical, no-cost resource for Oscar’s ~1.8 million members.
Live Chat is simple: When members go to request a VUC consultation through the Oscar mobile app or web portal, they’re given the option to select Live Chat through a dedicated entrypoint that is displayed alongside Phone and Asynchronous Messaging. When they select Live Chat, a structured “wait-in-line” experience displays their estimated wait time and place in line. Once a provider is ready, they are able to engage in a real-time conversation.
With this feature, our hypothesis was that real-time interactions would lead to quicker care, creating a streamlined experience with shorter resolution times. Over time, this would encourage more patients to choose messaging, aligning with their expectations for immediacy and responsiveness in virtual urgent care.
With this feature, our hypothesis was that real-time interactions would lead to quicker care, creating a streamlined experience with shorter resolution times
The immediacy of Live Chat also significantly improves the provider experience. Live Chat encourages members to respond quickly, enabling more efficient communication between members and providers. That level of focused case management reduces the need for handoffs, helping providers maintain continuity of care. Fewer interruptions and less context switching, in turn, increase providers’ efficiency, freeing capacity to serve more patients.
The results from our pilot were highly encouraging:
Improved patient experience: Through our pilot we saw a staggering 175% increase in messaging adoption, with over half of members choosing Live Chat over other methods of communication. Through Live Chat, both consultation and response times decreased by 90%. Overall consultation completion rate increased by 20%. From our member feedback survey, patients described Live Chat as “fast,” “efficient,” and “convenient.”
More efficient providers. With a 28% improvement in efficiency, measured by consultations completed per hour, Live Chat has also improved the experience for providers. This efficiency is largely attributed to the reduction in context switching and patient unresponsiveness, allowing providers to focus on real-time patient interactions.
Bringing Live Chat to more members and providers
Following our pilot, we have expanded Live Chat staffing with more providers across multiple states and extended operating hours. With patient experience metrics continuing to improve, we’ve set our sights on the next iteration: further supporting our providers and enabling creative configurations to expand Live Chat to more patients.
In addition, we also plan to further improve the provider experience by developing tooling such as multitasking notifications and automated workflows for managing unresponsive patients. Our goal is to also introduce advanced configurations that can support staffing by state, language, and capacity in non-continuous and discrete staffing blocks.
The success of the pilot confirms our hypothesis: Live Chat can serve as a transformative tool, establishing messaging as a viable and efficient alternative to phone consultations. This transformation not only enhances patient satisfaction but also optimizes the operational efficiency of healthcare services
The success of the pilot confirms our hypothesis: Live Chat can serve as a transformative tool, establishing messaging as a viable and efficient alternative to phone consultations.
Our vision is to make Live Chat a core part of Virtual Urgent Care, giving patients the immediacy of live interaction and the flexibility and privacy of Messaging. With each iteration, we move closer to a future where urgent care is as seamless and accessible as any digital chat experience.
