In the world of value-based care, healthcare systems are increasingly adopting digital strategies to deliver automated and seamless patient experiences—thereby providing a competitive advantage to their healthcare consumers.

From patient self-scheduling, appointment reminders, Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), Patient Referrals, Smart Waitlists, Patient Outreach, Secure Chat, Mobile patient intake, forms management, guided care pathways and value-based care to health screenings, telemedicine solutions, population health, patient notifications, surveys and reports, digital innovations are designed to deliver frictionless Patient Experiences (PX), while optimizing clinical, operational and financial outcomes. However, it’s the strategy and not technology that drives digital transformation.

Healthcare organizations can consider broadening the horizons of digital patient engagement solutions by integrating some of these industry best practices proven to deliver value.

1. Aligning with the Internal Stakeholders

Digital patient engagement solutions cannot function as individual compartments. They need to be aligned with the healthcare digital strategy to bring holistic business transformation to the organization. Healthcare leaders need to have an alignment on the structural framework of patient access and Patient Reported Outcomes to accelerate data quality and interoperability.

Common data structure needs to be created by the internal stakeholder team, especially by the Physicians in order to ensure secure interoperability standards that can maximize clinical outcomes. The healthcare ecosystem revolves around the patients, and hence Hospitals and Medical Practices need to prioritize on creating patient-centric care coordination solutions that maximize health outcomes.

2. Get a buy-in from Physician Teams

There needs to be an established process that the clinical, operational and the financial teams work together on. There could be an influencer or an organizational representative who can take on the role of a champion in defining the clear goals, objectives and the benefits of the process and get a buy-in from the key stakeholders.

3. Define the Goals and Objectives of the PX Program

To start with, clearly define the goals of the patient experience program. Have the longterm and the short term plans and define the roadmap to achieving them. Streamlining and optimizing Patient Experience in today’s world of consumerism is a challenging process, yet a critical component that cannot be overlooked. Once the roadmap is designed, the next step would be to identify the right digital tools to implement the roadmap.

Healthcare organizations need to identify the ideal patient engagement solutions that integrate analytics and digital tools to track and monitor real-time, accurate patient data. These data help care providers seamlessly collaborate with their patients for remote patient monitoring, timely medical intervention, medication adherence, pre & post-surgical care among many other patient experience factors that drive significant health outcomes, while reducing readmissions, improving patient financial experience and reimbursements.

4. Evaluate the Operational Costs

Healthcare systems need to consider that taking a digital-first approach or achieving digital transformation is not possible overnight. Taking a siloed approach to digital transformation may lead to disintegrated processes and fragmented systems that impacts the overall digital framework. Healthcare leaders of the organizations need to take a more holistic approach towards prioritizing patient experiences over the operational costs. This is when healthcare brands can accelerate Consumer Lifetime Value (CLV), patient loyalty and retention, while eventually building long-lasting consumer experiences and a valuable healthcare brand.

5. Track, Monitor and Improve

Are the digital initiatives creating the desired consumer experiences and the value to your healthcare brand? It’s critical that organizations build a data-driven, AI integrated platform that drive actionable insights and help track, monitor & improve your patient experience program. Machine learning tools can be implemented to understand and constantly improve processes to achieve sustainable results. Patient Reported Outcome Measures and Hospital Reported Outcomes Measures help discover the underlying causes for hiccups along the process and automated recommendations to improve the outcomes.

To learn more about creating your organization’s digital-first patient experience strategy, talk to our team.