Lisa C. Baker, BSN candidate 

The pandemic has spurred many trends that had already been ongoing. Remote work, slow travel, and online eCommerce had already been on the rise when the pandemic became a global crisis and social distancing measures meant they became 

The adoption of digital healthcare systems, or patient experience platforms, is just one of those trends. 

 became necessary as social distancing protocols meant that doctors and physicians needed a way to safely continue operating.

As with all new ways of doing things, the adoption of patient experience platforms requires an adjustment period. Patient experience and telehealth platforms are new. Not every practice in the healthcare sector has embraced it whole-heartedly. The terms ``patient experience platforms” and “telehealth” are often used interchangeably. 

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Many hospital managers, physicians, and private doctors are skeptical of telehealth. Many of the most-common concerns among medical professionals have been alleviated, whether by recent studies or the individual case-studies of private healthcare practices.

We’ll define what patient experience is and analyze some of the commonly held misconceptions regarding it.

In the same way that marketing is the sum of a customer’s interactions with a brand, 

 is the sum total of a patient’s interactions with a healthcare practice such as a hospital or a doctor’s office.

A patient experience platform helps to manage those interactions, in the same way that you would use an automation platform like HubSpot to manage your marketing workflows. Telehealth platforms are used for tasks like 

, facilitating virtual visits, maintaining client/doctor communication portals, and sending automated reminders for care procedures.

Difference Between Patient Experience and Patient Satisfaction

 are two terms that mean similar but subtly different things.

 is quantitative and measurable, and refers to factors like:

Communication between doctors and patients

Use of patient feedback surveys to improve care

, meanwhile, is qualitative and subjective. It refers to how much the patient experience meets the quality expectations and standards of the patient.

 can depend on very subtle things, and many of them are related to patient experience. Even minor disruptions in the patient experience can negatively impact it.

A few ways to improve patient satisfaction include:

Investing time in educating your patients

Leaving yourself open to patient questions and concerns

Patient experience is closely tied to the real-life processes and inner workings of your healthcare practice, namely the quality of care that your clinic provides as well as the level of your disease management and prevention.

Myth #1: Quality Care Needs to Happen Face to Face

A healthcare practice or hospital is a business. It’s an idea to many people in the healthcare sector, but it’s true. Healthcare is expensive, time-consuming, and requires sophisticated equipment to be effective—that money has to come from somewhere.

A healthcare practice also requires hundreds of administrative, logistical, financial, and communication-based tasks to function—many of which are unrelated to your patient’s care.

Patients need to be reminded of their appointments, follow-up care has to be administered to make sure your patient is taking their medication and following your instructions, lab reports have to be organized and made accessible to both you and the patient in a way that’s HIPAA compliant.

Patient experience platforms automate a lot of these cumbersome busywork tasks so that you can focus on helping people by being a doctor.

 indicated that patient experience platforms reduced unnecessary office visits by 84% and $75 per visit. That adds up to a lot of extra funds in your bank account you can use on more staff and better equipment.

Myth #2: Only Younger Generations Use Telehealth

 Older generations like baby boomers are 

 as likely to use telehealth as millennials or ‘Gen Z’ers’.

It’s commonly thought that only millennials and ‘Gen Z’ers’ embrace new technology like social media, smartphones, and digital healthcare. This isn’t true: older generations like baby boomers and the silent generation are just as likely to make use of digital healthcare.

Why? Because patient experience platforms make 

 who don’t have as much mobility or require more nuanced or intensive care.

 like booking appointments is most prevalent in adults ages 65-74.

Myth #3: Quality, Personalized Patient Care is Non-Scalable

 Patient experience platforms not only delivery quality healthcare, they do so 

Private practice physicians often argue that automation platforms take the human element out of a necessarily human profession, and that you can’t scale a practice that puts people at the center of it.

This isn’t so. Telehealth helps a practice to grow and reach more patients 

We’ve already established how telehealth platforms free up more space for patient care by automating administrative tasks for you and your staff.

typical office visit typically lasts 17 minutes

. That’s not very much time to make potentially life-altering decisions regarding your patient’s long-term care. Especially if that time is spent answering unnecessary questions which can be easily answered with a Google search or by reading your FAQ page.

Limitations and advantages of telemedicine

Myth #4: Patient Experience Platforms Treat Healthcare Like a Business and Patients Like Numbers Instead of people

An essential characteristic of any good doctor is empathy for other people. It involves dealing with potentially life-threatening situations with calm, grace, and compassion at all times.

Many healthcare professionals are justifiably skeptical about using automation platforms to replace that human element at the heart of all good healthcare. How do you train an algorithm to have empathy for sick or injured people?

Turns out, patient experience platforms make 

They facilitate communication between doctors and patients through online portals and virtual visits where quick, one-off questions can be answered. They also streamline your clinic’s workflows and leave you 

 time with your patients during appointments.

Myth #5: Patient Engagement Platforms are Prohibitively Expensive to Roll-Out

 Patient experience platforms save you money in the long run.

Patient experience platforms improve patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction leads to long-term relationships. Long-term patient relationships mean repeat patients. Repeat patients are how your practice makes money, and more importantly earns a good reputation.

 who register with their online within the first 30-days of their intake appointment.

It doesn’t stop there either. That improved patient loyalty leads to:

 fewer cancellations or no-shows that drain your money and waste your time

 patients who have been with you for longer are more likely to recommend you to friends and family and write about you online

: make sure that you get your money on time

 you spend less money on traditional marketing methods like fliers and TV commercials where you don’t know how much of your investment yo’re getting back

Many of the negative perceptions regarding patient experience platforms and other telehealth technologies are countered by statistical research and the observable facts.

 help you grow your practice while maintaining the quality of care by:

Facilitating communication between doctors and patients

Making quality care more accessible to elderly people

Saving time and money by automating mundane, routine administrative tasks

Lisa C. Baker is a freelance writer, consultant for 

Articles

As disastrous and horrific as the coronavirus pandemic has been, many good things have come from it too.

Myths of patient experience platforms

For a modern healthcare practice, patient communication on every level is a key factor in achieving good outcomes. There was a time in healthcare when practitioners could limit communication with patients, positioning themselves as experts who informed rather than collaborators who listened. There was a time when a quick conversation during a 15-minute appointment was considered sufficient opportunity for patients to ask questions and learn about their treatment plan.

Today, patient-centered care is essential to both patient satisfaction and health outcomes. That’s why an effective patient experience platform is an essential tool for the modern healthcare practice. Frequent communication, effective education, and continual patient engagement will improve patient satisfaction, staff efficiency, business growth, and health outcomes.

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At the most foundational level, your practice’s use of technology should improve the patient experience. Features like being able to schedule online appointments and fill out intake forms online help streamline the patient experience. Convenient appointment reminder texts and emails help patients feel valued, and they also help patients stay engaged in their care, enabling them to easily confirm or reschedule if needed. Online onboarding and intake reduce wait times, enabling patients to spend less time in the waiting room and more time receiving care. Providing quick, convenient access to health information and personal health records enables patients to quickly view results of lab tests or get more information about a recent diagnosis, all of which increases patient knowledge and therefore 

A patient experience platform can also give patients an automatic opportunity to fill out a customer satisfaction survey or a 

 after their appointment. Including this as a standard part of a practice workflow demonstrates care what patients think and help improve their experience. Surveys and reviews provide a practitioner important data that can be used to improve patient satisfaction. Setting this as a standard for a practice recognizes the role of a patient as an evaluator of healthcare, which is a key concept in patient-centered care.

In addition, having a database of patient reviews readily available online provides transparency to new patients, giving them valuable information to make informed choices about their care. Over time, a database of positive patient reviews becomes a marketing tool for a growing practice.

Patient Experience Software Improves Staff Satisfaction 

Most healthcare practice staff spend hours per week on rote patient communication. Administrative tasks such as scheduling appointments, sending reminders, rescheduling no-shows, and sending invoices require significant staff time. Performing these tasks by hand adds no value as compared to automation, and it’s frustrating and time-consuming for staff. In addition, many practices have insufficient systems for tracking informal communication, resulting in even greater inefficiency.

A good software can automate much of the work of communicating with patients while maintaining personalization. Patient actions can trigger specific communications, allowing staff to focus their time on more interesting and complex customer care needs instead of rote administrative tasks. A patient experience platform can also maintain automatic, instant records of every patient communication, ensuring seamless transition among different staff members.

For providers, too, a patient experience software can streamline care in a variety of ways. Features like digital contactless charting help providers spend less time tracking information and more time caring for patients. When communication is fully integrated with EHR, a provider can see everything about a patient—from healthcare records to recent conversations—at a glance, giving providers more detailed information about patients and enabling more efficiency, higher satisfaction, improved communication, and better care.

A Good Patient Experience Grows a Healthcare Practice

Gaining new patients and retaining existing ones is another key benefit of a powerful patient experience platform. Because it makes communication personalized, easy, and seamless, software can enable a practice to implement new marketing initiatives with little effort. Built-in email features enable quickly creating and sending a newsletter that includes personalized information for each patient. Refer-a-friend features help a practice grow organically by referral. And, as mentioned above, inviting patients to fill out online reviews helps build a positive reputation for a practice.

But there are two ways to grow a practice. The first is by gaining new patients; the second is by increasing care for existing patients. The patient experience is especially valuable for the second type of growth. Many existing patients don’t seek care as frequently as they should, especially in primary care practices. Automated reminders are a powerful tool for encouraging patients to schedule an appointment, which many patients put off when they feel healthy.

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Patient Experience Improves Health Outcomes

Finally, a patient experience platform can help improve overall outcomes for a practice and its patients. Software tools accomplish this through a variety of paths.

First, and perhaps most importantly, it improves outcomes by improving patient involvement and education. Software tools accomplish this by providing opportunities for communication that are personalized and targeted, without requiring undo administrative effort from the practice provider and staff.

For example, imagine a patient who is overdue for his annual checkup with his primary provider, and who has also been experiencing minor concerns related to a chronic condition. Since he doesn’t currently feel any urgency to solve a health problem, this patient is likely to delay scheduling an appointment until the minor problems become more serious. Conversely, software could send him an automated text reminder to schedule his checkup.

This patient would be likely to schedule his appointment with just a text reminder. But what if the system went even further, and included in the text a link that he could click to ask a question of his doctor? Clicking the link could enable him to immediately ask a question about the concerns he’s experiencing and receive a quick answer, enabling the doctor to assess whether the patient needs an earlier appointment or needs to take additional actions first. By providing convenient, quick communication tools

 patient experience software enables a patient to be more active, informed, and knowledgeable about their health and healthcare needs.

For a private practice, implementing a patient experience tool can improve marketing, increase efficiency, and boost patient satisfaction. It can also exponentially improve a provider’s ability to communicate with patients to help them better understand their health, know more about their care, and be more involved in making decisions about their care. Software is a powerful tool for provider-patient collaboration, which is one of the most important factors for determining outcomes in every area of health. That’s why a patient experience platform is such an essential tool for every healthcare provider who wants to offer effective, quality care.

Software is a powerful tool for provider-patient collaboration, which is one of the most important factors for determining outcomes in every area of health.