With the increase in digital health, remote care, and patient access, the need for a reliable platform to conduct everything has also increased. But while we all need reliable communication platforms, properly utilizing them is an entirely different story. There is already so much to consider in terms of what works best for your organization, but then you need to rethink everything in terms of what is best for the patient. You might be reassured that it is safe and easy to use on the administrator end, but is it that way on the user end for the patients?
For some insights on patient engagement in communication platforms we reached out to our beautiful Healthcare IT Today Community. The following is what they had to say.
Patty Riskind, CEO at Orbita
Organizations are adopting virtual assistants to deliver consumer-friendly experiences and streamline communications between providers and patients. Solutions built on platforms leveraging both conversational and generative AI will prove most valuable. GenAI helps make a wide range of content from diverse formats easy to ingest, while conversational AI makes it easy to understand. Digital virtual assistants can then construct true dialogs that “learn” from the patient to zero in on intent and context so relevant, accurate information is provided.
Vijay Verma, VP of Product Strategy at TeleVox
A common shortcoming in healthcare communication systems is interoperability. Many healthcare organizations use disparate EHRs and communication tools that may not seamlessly integrate, leading to data silos and communication gaps. A unified platform can integrate various communication channels (e.g., SMS, voice, email, virtual assistant) into a single solution powered by AI, reducing complexity and enhancing communication across the organization. Patient engagement platforms in healthcare are instrumental in enabling patients to securely communicate with their healthcare providers, access their health records, and receive personalized health information. The right platform empowers patients to take an active role in their healthcare, leading to better adherence to treatment plans and improved health outcomes.
Kel Pults, DHA, MSN, RN-BC, NREMT, Chief Clinical Officer and VP, Government Strategy at MediQuant
Healthcare communication platforms play a crucial role in improving the quality of patient care and the efficiency of care coordination. These platforms facilitate faster and more effective communication among providers, reducing the need for time-consuming meetings, manual note-taking, and cumbersome portals. They allow care teams to exchange messages, test results, and patient impressions, streamlining the process and preventing duplicate tests. However, there is certainly room for improvement in the communication between care teams and their patients.
Today’s patients continue to struggle to stay informed on their care plans, receive test results, and access complete medical records. Additionally, inter-organizational communication between providers and business associates remains a challenge, with EHR and other IT vendors lacking seamless interoperability between platforms. Progress is being made on that last point as the 21st Century Cures Act aims to address some of these issues by establishing FHIR as the standard format for data sharing, but there is still work to be done to enhance communication both within and across healthcare organizations.
Kathy Ford, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Project Ronin
We’ve witnessed remarkable advancements in healthcare communications platforms over the years, driven by the continued efforts of health IT providers to make care delivery more patient-centric and personalized to each individual’s unique care journey. One of the longstanding challenges in the past was finding more effective means for patients to communicate new symptoms or changes to their well-being that could be concerning to the care team. Today, the most effective platforms are those that provide clinicians with personalized, real-time insights that were previously only available within the confines of the examination room.
When patients are empowered to connect with their care team from the comfort of their homes, document symptoms, stay informed on their treatment plan, and immediately share any changes in their condition, they are more likely to remain engaged in their care and reduce their risk of adverse events. Adopting these advanced platforms enables care teams to accelerate personalized treatment decisions, improve patient outcomes, and strengthen the long-term bonds between them and their patients.
Nadeem Dhanani, Medical Director of Urology at ModMed
Patients feel engaged when they can own their care experience, which is why practices should consider EHR solutions that fully integrate communication tools within the platform. These integrated tools, such as online portals and patient-facing apps, can go a long way in empowering patients to manage their care beyond the doctor’s office, enabling them to make informed health decisions from anywhere by streamlining two-way communication with providers and easy access to medical records, test results, and more.
Sagran Moodley, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer at Ontada
Open, extensible communication platforms are essential in healthcare to facilitate seamless orchestration and coordination of services. Transitioning patient care between medical settings—from primary to specialty care—highlights the need for frictionless sharing of clinical insights. The foundation of this seamless coordination lies in open data standards and application programming interfaces (APIs).
Moreover, Clinical Decision Support (CDS) ensures that the right data reaches the right medical professional at the appropriate time and place. For community oncologists treating diverse cancers, real-time access to guidelines and evidence-based protocols is vital. By integrating these platforms directly into the EHR, general practitioners and specialists can communicate effectively about treatments and emerging biomarkers, leading to tailored, high-standard care decisions for all patients. Such platforms, thus, address holistic patient needs across care settings.
John Moyer, Sr. Product Director, Lab Insights at hc1 Insights
In healthcare IT, it’s more critical now than ever that care providers have easy ways to collaborate and ensure visibility, action, and accountability in a timely manner across the care continuum for their patients. It is not uncommon for teams to work in multiple systems, such as the EHR, LIS, or Billing, and then have siloed data in these disparate systems which prevent the flow of information and communication spanning across the entire health system. At best this leads to operational efficiencies which cost time and money, but at worst it can negatively impact the care and outcome of the patients they serve. It’s imperative that healthcare entities invest in technology and platforms designed to be the system of engagement to streamline these communications and drive a proactive versus reactive approach to patient care.
Lyle Berkowitz, CEO at KeyCare
How do patients want to communicate with their doctors? While no platform is perfect, there is a compelling argument that the most important thing for patients is convenience and simplicity. They want a single system that lets them communicate with all their providers to get an answer to their questions, as well as look up their results or schedule appointments, and they certainly don’t want a separate system for every doctor. Arguably, Epic’s MyChart has become the de facto standard in this area because of its widespread adoption and ease of record sharing across provider organizations.
David Wright, Chief Operations Officer at Vital
Getting care can be confusing, stressful, and frustrating. A trip to the emergency department (ED), for instance, is filled with uncertainty about wait times, what the test results will find, what happens next – the list goes on. Then there’s the complex and unfamiliar terminology found in imaging reports, discharge instructions, and similar medical notes. Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) can help solve some of these issues. Algorithms can predict wait times for each patient.
Education resources can be automatically delivered to their smartphone based on triggers in the EHR. Large language models are quite good at simplifying medical jargon into plain language. Considering the requirements of the 21st Century Cures Act, the timing of these new technologies couldn’t be better. Hospitals that embrace AI that helps address the many emotions and uncertainties while receiving care will not only improve patient outcomes but differentiate themselves in the market. The time for incorporating AI into the patient experience is now.
Lynn Carroll, Chief Operating Officer at HSBlox
Communication platforms provide the opportunity to offer “virtual first” approaches to patient interactions, care team data sharing based on care continuum trigger events, and capture of data from remote patient interactions and device readings in the home or in the community. However, digital health communications aren’t always available to rural and disadvantaged populations – so patient engagement platforms have to incorporate omnichannel approaches that include high-touch communications — in-person, traditional mail, and phone-based reach-outs — particularly for high-need, polychronic individuals who have needs for care navigation and assistance related to behavioral, social and interpersonal matters.
Patient engagement is a multi-faceted opportunity. While there are a myriad of applicable digital health approaches – it’s important to understand the capacity of a given patient for self-directed care. By stratifying the patient population into high-need, high-touch versus self-directed cohorts – tools for secure communication can be effectively deployed. Targeted education is a critical need for polychronic individuals, and many patients in this category will require in-person interaction with a feedback loop. Not all organizations are prepared with both process and technology to engage these patients – but this will continue to evolve, particularly under value-based care programs.
Cassie Choi, Co-Founder and Chief Health Equity & People Officer at Pair Team
There are great platforms emerging to support healthcare teams to better communicate with patients such as texting platforms, apps, patient portals, and even telemedicine platforms. This allows providers to easily plug into modern communication and care delivery methods, however, there are challenges. Most people are able to text, but there are privacy and consent considerations that providers need to be aware of. Apps and portals are successful only in patient populations that are tech-savvy enough to navigate an app or portal login and create additional challenges with staying on top of notifications.
On the provider side, new platforms create new channels for inbound communications that need to be actioned on top of the high volume of work they’re already faced with. It’s another notification, another task, and another platform to log into. Lastly, all of these new opportunities create an additional cost-burden on practices that are trying to create a more cohesive, engaging, and positive healthcare experience. No communication platform is a one-size-fits-all, but understanding technology used in these platforms is key for ensuring safe and ethical communication with patients.
So many great insights on patient engagement! Huge thank you to everyone who took the time out of their day to submit a quote and huge thanks to all of you for reading them! We could not have done any of this without your support. Are there any areas of patient engagement that we missed in this article? Share your thoughts with us on this topic either in the comments down below or through social media, we’d love to hear from all of you!
