Castell is a population health platform working to transform the healthcare industry for providers, payers, and healthcare systems. By providing the data and infrastructure that enables value-based systems of care, Castell works to improve health outcomes and drive innovation in payment models.

Recognizing that value-based care relies on vast amounts of data, operational transformation, and high-touch care coordination, Castell partners with payers, independent provider groups, and health systems to accelerate the transformation. Its highly developed data ecosystem empowers providers to prioritize their limited patient contact time and helps patients navigate the complex ecosystem of chronic and post-acute care.

Castell leaders met the Slalom team at Salesforce Dreamforce after sitting beside a former Slalom client who said, “If you’re running an RFP in healthcare, you should talk to Slalom.” They had also attended a session where Slalom was copresenting with another client, and that reinforced what they had heard. Castell had already explored several other potential Salesforce implementation partners and was close to making a decision. Meeting with Slalom changed those plans.

“Castell’s remit is to give healthcare providers the tools they need to deliver more patient-focused and comprehensive care at scale,” says Jake Harwood, a director focused on healthcare technology at Slalom. “As a healthcare professional, I love working on programs that advance our understanding of care delivery and help people stay healthy or manage their conditions, rather than only treating them when they get really sick.”

“From the first meeting, their culture fit was the same as ours,” says Rick Bennett, director of Population Health Solutions at Castell. “The people they had on their team, the way they approached problems, it all aligned with our culture and mission.”

Coming into the project, Castell had no Salesforce experience, and the Slalom team had to deliver a big lift quickly while learning the ins and outs of Castell’s value-based care offerings. The teams focused on collaboration, communication, and transparency throughout the work. Slalom also instilled a change management program, helping onboard Castell’s newly hired Salesforce developers, coordinate in the Agile program delivery, and develop the change management infrastructure within the operational teams to bring end users along throughout the process.

“Partnering with a client who’s never done this before is immensely rewarding,” says Harwood. “We have a special obligation to share the craft of Salesforce design and delivery with them. And we worked through challenging governance and platform conversations empathetically and as a team.”

“Our teams were really embedded with Slalom’s teams, and it felt like one team most of the time,” Bennett added. “We started this project with no Salesforce experience. By the end of it, through Slalom letting our team be embedded with them and working through that and learning, it felt like we came out of the project with a fairly mature group. I think that was really important and made a big difference for us.”

Castell was facing two key challenges. First, the company’s current tools weren’t able to scale and evolve with the company as it got into new ways of approaching value-based care. Secondly, care coordinators worked with complex patients and needed to know the exact moments when to intervene and follow up. Traditional electronic medical record (EMR) systems made it difficult to see the full population and datasets of patients. Castell sought a solution that would simplify the workflows of care coordinators, giving them real-time information in one place with clear expectations of what they need to do.

“Being able to make their workflow easier means they get to talk to and help more patients,” says Lisa Mekic, Castell’s director of Product Data Analytics. “That’s the really big impact they can create in their roles, not sifting through data and Excel files.”

“We were really focused on end-user experiences whenever we were tackling any challenges,” Goodhue says.

Finally, a Salesforce Experience Cloud implementation using the Omnistudio Discovery Framework allowed Castell’s team to collaborate more seamlessly with associated medical groups and affiliates on patient care. The implementation clearly provided patient insights, such as risk scores, recommended follow-ups, open quality measures, and hierarchical condition categories, in a secure and personalized portal so affiliate providers could better partner with Castell care coordinators and make data-driven decisions, increasing engagement and action among patients.

Knowing the importance of protecting patient health information, the team also developed a robust security and compliance model, implementing Salesforce Shield on the Hyperforce architecture.

“With the shared mission at the core of both companies, it felt like we were working with coworkers and not a vendor,” Mekic says.

Within six months, the Slalom solution produced impressive results for Castell and its network of 130 users, supporting 800 external providers. Within six months, a care coordinator was able to make 20 more calls a week on average. The phone calls were also more impactful, with the percentage of calls leading to scheduled appointments increasing from 30% to 41%.

Patients are also receiving calls that are tailored to their needs. In the past, a care coordinator may have called a patient several times for each different care gap. Now, it’s just one call for everything, leading to impactful care and satisfied patients.

“Care coordinators can talk about more topics and answer more questions from patients because everything is structured more easily for them to see,” Mekic says.

This improved production has rippled throughout the company. The pharmacy side of Castell’s network has more than doubled its weekly call volume. The coding and documentation team increased its longitudinal record reviews from 750 to 1,150 per week, ensuring more patients with chronic conditions are properly coded.

These improvements mean Castell and its network of providers can help more patients in need, delivering the right care with better efficiency. The organization is already working on projects for two additional teams.

“Invest in change management. It is worth the money,” Mekic says. “Teams across the organization are seeing how great the results have been and are clamoring to get in.”