How Digital Interactions With Patients Improve Care By Healthcare Providers

The increased adoption of value-based, patient-centric care continues to push healthcare providers to consider new technologies to improve the patient experience (PX).

The patient who uses a browser to find medical professionals is the same person who makes an appointment, calls for directions, fills out an intake form, schedules diagnostic tests, etc. However, more often than not, each interaction with the patient remains isolated, leading to a bad experience of having to repeat the same information.

In addition, studies show that more active patients have better health outcomes and care experiences. Communication with the medical center is correlated with patient adherence to treatment plans and better health outcomes.

As many healthcare providers implement digital transformation, solutions that enhance the patient experience need to be reviewed.

4 Ways That Technology And Digital Interactions With Patients Can Improve Their Experience:

1) Make Interactions Between Patients And Healthcare Providers Simple And Easy

People of all age ranges have modality preferences when it comes to interacting with an institution or service provider. Older users may prefer a phone call to communicate with the institution, while younger users are content interacting with an automated chatbot through their mobile device. Therefore, having omnichannel communication to interact with patients can reduce friction and help improve the experience for consumers, patients and staff alike.

By analysing first-hand data on all patient interactions throughout the care process (for example, recorded phone calls, chatbot interactions, social media interactions with the medical center, completed forms, post-care surveys…), healthcare providers can learn about a patient’s experience throughout the customer journey. This means customising interactions appropriately, identifying which experiences need improvement, and finding new automation opportunities to create more intuitive CX and reduce administrative burden.

2) Increase Patient Access With Self-Service Information And Tasks

For many users and patients, the first interaction with a medical center may be through an Internet search. Healthcare providers must ensure that web navigation and content organisation are optimised so that visitors can easily find the information they need. The use of intelligent knowledge management that optimise this content can improve the patient experience by enabling self-service that begins with Internet searches, extends through web pages, mobile applications, bots and digital channels.

According to McKinsey, increasing automation and self-service of the consumer and patient care process can reduce administrative costs by an additional $24 billion to $48 billion per year. Once the user or patient interacts with the provider, routine actions can be automated, such as scheduling, rescheduling, or cancelling an appointment or paying a bill. Automated and self-service CX capabilities give patients the advantage of managing on their own schedule and give healthcare providers the ability to assign staff to optimise care.

3) Improve Patient Care By Connecting Experiences Throughout The Comprehensive Care Process

While standardised post-care surveys help healthcare providers understand retrospective patient impressions, there is also a wealth of information already found in phone call and digital interaction data. By aggregating data from each touch point and combining it with post-care survey response data, medical centers can apply analytics to gain insights into the end-to-end patient journey.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), healthcare providers can gain actionable insights and receive guidance to identify improvements, chart next steps, and drive excellence in patient care and interactions.

4) Train Call Center Agents To Participate In Increasing Patient Satisfaction

With staff shortages and pressure on healthcare systems, intelligent collaboration between people and machines can make all the difference. Transferring routine, low-risk interactions to intelligent conversational AI that can scale to a human, on demand, can save staff countless hours of work.

Plus, by empowering contact center agents with a knowledge base, automated sentiment analysis, and real-time guidance, they’ll be set up for more empathetic conversations and meaningful support.

Today’s customer experience (CX)-based technology is the key to connecting patient interaction data in a way that increases a healthcare provider’s understanding of the entire care process.