How can providers accelerate innovation in patient engagement and experience?

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Paul Grundy MD, MPH, FACOEM, FACPM
Tue 09 Mar 2021
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The advancement in technology and competition in the market highlights the importance of customer experience. Applying this concept to healthcare, a service provider brings forth the value of patient experience. Particularly after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, transformative patient engagement has become vital for healthcare organizations to maintain economic viability. To respond to this need, hospitals and clinics have streamlined their interactions for improving patient experience.

While other industries have focused more on customer experience to stand distinctive in the market, the healthcare industry has long focused on better health outcomes, diagnostics, and operational standards. But since the pandemic, there has been a marked increase in the importance of delivering a superior patient care experience. This paradigmatic shift focuses on patients’ concerns, expectations, perceptions, and safety. Let’s have a look at what has evolved in healthcare due to this pandemic.

Shift to consumerism (treating patients like consumers)

The overall cost of healthcare per individual is increasing, and accordingly, patients (especially ones with long-term illness) prefer to choose cost-effective options. Thus, healthcare providers should focus on selecting technologies that would reduce resource requirements and other overhead costs. In one survey, 10-22% of respondents avoided medical help because of cost, and 19-35% delayed a required procedure for the same reason.

medical care is critical to the enactment of patient consumerism because it adds dignity, empathy, and respect to this process. Considering the patient’s preferences to provide healthcare services can be a good patient engagement strategy. For example, a simple checklist of procedures generated based on the patient’s requests can improve satisfaction.

AI-powered solutions for better employee satisfaction

AI-enabled patient engagement strategies are indeed very powerful. The solutions are possible to execute by integrating voice-enabled tools, chatbots, or other omnichannel plans. Patient interactions can get accurately analyzed to derive high-quality intelligence, which allows for more personalized patient experiences.

Machine learning (ML) techniques can also help improve employees’ productivity, which leads to increased satisfaction. According to the Healthcare Satisfaction Report from Press Ganey, an increase in employees’ satisfaction can increase patients’ quality of care. The best example of the use of ML techniques to accomplish this is the chatbot, which saves employees time and energy in optimizing patient engagement. They help patients with reports, billing, drug prescriptions, and personalized conversations.

Healthcare and clinical quality

Medical care can get bogged down by siloed staff operations. Ineffective execution of plans can even drive patients towards competitors. The solution lies in relying on digital transparency and data-intensive operations. The familiar care quality goals of payors and healthcare organizations — lower readmission rates for the same ailment, reduction in after-care solutions that restrict routine, decreased length of hospital stay, and more — are expectations that are shared by patients. All of these goals translate into better, faster, and more accurate treatment.

Conclusion

Improving patient experience has become a healthcare priority. Market demands and medical awareness have triggered an irreversible transformation in the service model used in patient care. Modern patients prefer getting treated like customers. They expect personalized and technologically advanced healthcare.

With these expectations, analytical data is a veritable goldmine for the healthcare provider. It helps with care administration, planning business strategies, marketing, and enhancing patient experiences. The patient feedback loop is the starting point to generate accurate reports, and companies that can unlock the power of this data can develop a sustainable, informed and loyal base of patient customers.

Innovaccer’s patient engagement solution personalizes care to keep patients satisfied and deeply engaged in their health with a comprehensive platform supporting automated outreach, patient mobile app, analytics, call center workflows and more. Learn more about it here.

Learn how you can build the future of healthcare with Innovaccer by requesting a demo here.

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Tags: Patient Engagement
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Paul Grundy MD, MPH, FACOEM, FACPM
How can providers accelerate innovation in patient engagement and experience?
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