The Zero-touch World
Ordering a meal, booking a cab, or even traveling virtually – it’s all a matter of few clicks today. Wouldn’t it be great if patients are given a similar user experience? Imagine how their satisfaction levels will improve if patients are provided with meaningful opportunities to enrich their interaction with the providers or care givers in a much more sophisticated way, for example through a chat in real-time about the lab report they just received on their smartphone.
Today, every industry considers user experience to be one of the key driving factors of their business. From Airbnb to Uber to Netflix, every brand is striving to offer a one-touch or zero-touch user experience. Hence, it’s only natural that patients expect the same kind of experience from their healthcare providers.
The Connected Patient
Today’s connected patients demand a more personalized and engaging experience that offers instant access to healthcare services anytime, anywhere, and on any device, from smartphones and tablets to wearables.
Driven by healthcare reforms, advancement in technology, and consumer demands, the healthcare landscape is undergoing unprecedented transformation. It is no longer about the number of patients that a provider serviced. There is a paradigm shift towards value-based patient engagement rather than just being a volume-based business. All of the entities involved in this connected patient care – providers, payers, regulators, healthcare vendors and others have to respond to this changing face of patient engagement.
From regulators to providers and payers, the objective is to achieve the Quadruple Aim – improve patient care outcomes, improve population health, reduce costs and enable joy of work for physicians.
The 360o Approach to Patient Engagement
The journey to adopting the 360o patient engagement approach has multiple facets. The following are the non-clinical aspects, the cumulative effects of which will reduce patient waiting times, improve care response times, and foster better provider-to-patient communication.
Another critical aspect of the 360o approach to patient engagement is ensuring the patients’ holistic well-being by improving the overall quality of care. The following are some ways in which the provider can enable this:
Telehealth: By engaging one-on-one with the patients online, the provider can manage the follow-up caregiving better and offer timely advice about their condition.
Remote patient monitoring: Through remote monitoring devices, the provider can keep track of the progress of the patients’ condition and intervene as required.
Digital therapeutic apps: Apps for meditation, fitness trackers, sleep trackers, calorie counters, etc., can offer a lot more information about the patient, which contributes to a better quality of care.
Through these methods, the quality of care is vastly improved, leading to better outcomes and lower costs for the providers.
The healthcare technology providers’ role becomes more magnified as the clinicians look to them to leverage technology to design a holistic patient experience. Hence, it’s important that they listen closely to the patient to help providers engage with patients better. Watch this space to know more about the patient engagement landscape and how different healthcare vendors can prioritize various patient engagement areas.