Challenge
Eating Recovery Center operates in one of the most complex and sensitive areas of healthcare. Demand for specialist eating disorder treatment was increasing, yet ERC’s pre-admissions and intake processes were slow, fragmented, and heavily manual. Patients and families had to navigate a complex, emotionally charged journey with limited visibility, repeated data entry, and inconsistent communication.
Operationally, this caused significant leakage across the intake funnel. The average pre-admission cycle time was eleven days. Errors in insurance capture were frequent. Internal teams depended on manual workarounds across CRM, clinical, and operational systems. Crucially, the organisation lacked a clear measurement framework to quantify how process inefficiencies were limiting throughput, revenue, and patient care outcomes.
ERC needed to simplify and humanise the patient experience, while materially improving speed to care, operational efficiency, and financial performance.
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Solution
Equator led a user-focused digital transformation programme covering diagnostics, strategy, experience design, and platform delivery.
We began by applying a rigorous diagnostic approach across people, processes, and technology. This enabled us to quantify the opportunity, demonstrating that every six-hour reduction in intake cycle time would unlock approximately $300,000 in additional annual revenue. This insight reframed the programme from a mere digital upgrade to a measurable value-creation initiative.
The main solution involved designing and delivering a secure, self-service digital patient portal that assists individuals from pre-admission through clinical intake and step-down from care. The experience was intentionally structured to guide patients smoothly through a clear and supportive journey, displaying progress, next steps, and necessary actions in plain language.
Key elements included:
- A custom front end integrated into existing Salesforce and MuleSoft platforms, avoiding significant internal retraining
- Intuitive insurance upload and verification workflows significantly reducing early-stage errors
- Clear task-based guidance to reduce anxiety and drop-off during admissions
- Personalised care-team visibility and scheduling tools to retain a human connection
- An MVP-led, test-and-learn delivery model enabling rapid optimisation ahead of wider rollout
- The platform was designed to meet HIPAA requirements, scale nationally and support long-term expansion.
Results
Pre-admission cycle time reduced from 11 days to approximately 2–2.5 days
$8.5–$8.6m in additional annual revenue unlocked through increased throughput capacity
240% ROI achieved on the first phase of investment
Significant reduction in intake leakage and insurance processing errors
Improved patient confidence, clarity and emotional support throughout admissions
Outcome
Delivered through a blended onshore, nearshore, and offshore team model, the programme established a repeatable framework for continuous optimisation and growth. By combining measurement-led strategies with empathetic experience design, ERC turned a previously unquantified operational constraint into a scalable growth engine, while significantly improving patient access to care.