The position of healthcare providers and their interactions with patients throughout the patient care journey are evolving rapidly. Technology-savvy consumers accustomed to self-service and digital interactions expect healthcare providers to supply easily accessible, interactive patient services 24/7/365. The increasingly complex healthcare provider landscape is compounding the problem as medical facilities look for new ways to attract and support patients and to drive efficiencies and revenue in areas such as patient scheduling, referrals, wellness management, and payments.
Facilitating Patient Journeys
Patient communications were once driven primarily by phone calls and letters. Today it’s all about engaging with patients using a wide variety of media, including email, text, chat, patient portals, and social media. The opportunity exists now for healthcare providers to take advantage of these near-term and real-time formats to improve patient/provider interaction and to maximize their opportunity to supply high-quality, cost-effective care. By taking advantage of automated self-service applications, multimedia information formats, and omnichannel closed-loop communication services, there are practical ways to increase patient satisfaction and deliver the right information to the right place at the right time across the full spectrum of care – all while reducing costs.
Still, many enterprises do not take advantage of readily available telecommunication solutions as an important key in reaching their patient satisfaction and patient experience goals. In a survey by the American College of Healthcare:
- 81% of healthcare consumers say they are unhappy with their healthcare experience.
- 63% of healthcare providers feel they are delivering a good experience, as opposed to only 40% of consumers.
- 75% of providers say patient experience is critical to the future success of their organizations, yet patient satisfaction doesn’t rank in the top five of hospital CEOs’ concerns.
Conversely, the value of automated systems in collaborative care is reinforced by a World Business Research (WBR) and Conversa Health survey in which respondents report that automated healthcare transforms the delivery of care with wide-ranging benefits:
- 87% feel that automated healthcare is beneficial for helping patients engage in their own care.
- 82% see value in using automated healthcare solutions for gathering more patient-generated health data.
- 79% of respondents will be working on integrating automated healthcare solutions within the next 24 months.
- 49% of respondents are either integrating or already have integrated patient-generated health data into their patient experience initiatives.
The bottom line regarding patient satisfaction and outcome is this: Healthcare enterprises should not be ignoring the value that affordable communication services offer in driving patient satisfaction. Nor should they ignore the benefits that can be realized by these systems in addressing the revenue leakage, staff productivity, care plan adherence, and loyalty challenges that are related to the patient experience.
For a further look at the evolving patient journey, download our full healthcare white paper.
HEALTHCARE ADVISORY SERVICES:
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A productive first step toward easily accessible, interactive patient services is to request a consultation with ConvergeOne Healthcare Advisory Services.
Our specialists apply their years of hands-on healthcare expertise to objectively analyze business requirements, workflows, and processes, then custom match the best mix of vendor-neutral technologies to maximize the value of existing and future communications investments.
Topics: Healthcare
