Patient Experience Through Behavior Modification
Patient Experience is the cumulative impact of the engagements and interactions that occur through a patient’s journey with a chosen healthcare organization defining the patient’s perceptions and feelings towards the healthcare organization’s staff, technology, services and products.
Healthcare spends enormous resources on identifying and delivering a quality experience within the four walls of the institution. Once the patient leaves the four walls the ability to communicate and extend the conversation is significantly diminished for most organizations. What texting provides, is the means to extend the conversation with an efficient and effective communication modality.
The purpose of communication is to secure important information whether physiological or emotional or convey important information, to co-learn, and ultimately to elicit a desired behavior from the patient. Here are current examples with our client’s today:
Pharmacy’s: Utilize SecureRx© to proactively ask for refills.
Medical Supply Company’s use SecureOrder© to proactively request reorders.
Diabetes Supply Companies use Forms & Signatures to send and retrieve EOBs and ABN using text.
ACO reach out at scale with Campaigns to manage large populations of Diabetics.
Critical Access Hospitals reach out at scale to promote Annual Wellness Visits and capture downstream revenue.
Organizations need to leverage the idea that texting can create communication efficiencies, far beyond the traditional phone handset, with a desired communication modality. The scenario that often plays out in healthcare goes like this: Care giver has been assigned a panel of patients. To that panel of patients a defined protocol of interaction is to be applied. This often takes the form of contacting the patient and trying to get information, checking on the patient, continuing to educate the patient, or some combination thereof. The approach is to setup a call list and dial until one finally connects with a patient. In the interim many voicemails have been placed with no understanding by the patient what the call was for and the patient required to constantly check voicemail. In addition if the patient initiated the call, rarely can they be routed to “their” caregiver. It often ends in a voicemail with the caregiver being required to check voicemail and then the circle of futility continues.
With all the growth in texting, healthcare has yet to exploit its capability of creating a digital conversation. Texting is still significantly underutilized and represents one of the best ways to deliver secure web-based applications. Today, business texts as simply a means to transmit data. Very few organizations have achieved an extension of their value proposition and created a connection to their patients with texting. By embracing the simplicity of brevity while mitigating the concerns fostered by HIPAA compliance and PHI transmission, healthcare can transform patient interactions. Imagine reaching patients efficiently, with relevant messages tailored to their needs, all while minimizing interruptions. It’s time for healthcare to unlock the full potential of texting.
When we can extend the conversation, keep the patient educated and engaged, improve accountability, navigate to a desired behavior, we can improve outcomes both clinically and financially. Let’s GO!!
– Dr. Bob Dudzinski
