Educating patients to reduce ER overload—one ad at a time.
📍 The Situation
At Sparrow, emergency departments were buckling under patient volume—and the majority of those visits weren’t actually emergencies.
Many people simply didn’t understand the difference between FastCare, Urgent Care, and Emergency Care. They defaulted to the ER, which led to massive wait times, overwhelmed staff, and frustrated patients.
To fix it, we launched the “Know Before You Go” campaign—an education-first, clarity-driven digital initiative to help patients choose the right care, right away.
🛠 My Role
I led the planning and execution of the entire digital campaign:
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Microsite Development: I hired and directed a developer to create a custom landing page that:
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Explained the differences between levels of care
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Mapped nearby FastCare and Urgent Care locations
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Linked directly to our Wait in Line check-in tool
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Digital Advertising: I partnered with media buyers and creatives to run display and social campaigns designed to funnel users to the microsite.
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Messaging Strategy: I worked cross-functionally to ensure every channel—ads, site, internal comms—spoke with one voice and kept the focus on empowering the patient.
📊 Results
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400% increase in visits to FastCare locations in the first 6 months
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Over 10,000 views on the microsite
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Several hundred social engagements, driving both visibility and clicks
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Marked improvement in care routing behavior and decreased pressure on emergency departments
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Sustained adoption of the Wait in Line platform for online check-ins
🪞 Looking Back
This was one of the clearest cause-and-effect campaigns I’ve ever led. We saw real, behavior-level change—not because we told people what to do, but because we showed them why it mattered. Clear language, good UX, and smart targeting made all the difference.