Omnichannel Digital Patient Engagement Tools Promote Care Access

March 08, 2021 - Digital omnichannel patient engagement tools have the power to increase quality of care by providing simplified care access to patients and streamlining processes for providers, said experts at Xtelligent Healthcare Media’s Patient Experience Virtual Summit.

As the industry continues to adopt virtual care tools, a major key to patient engagement is ensuring the technology is as user-friendly as possible.

Tara J. Nooteboom, manager of digital patient engagement at the Chicago-based academic health center Rush System for Health, explained that omnichannel patient engagement involves merging digital entry points to allow patient access to a variety of services in one place. She suggested providers and healthcare executives think of their digital tools as a family instead of separate entities to consider how they all fit together.

"The more that you can bring those digital entry points together, the more successful that you will be in navigating patients to the right places and boosting utilization of those digital tools,” Nooteboom said during the panel discussion.

Panelist Arwin Soetanto, CEO and co-founder of Lifestyle Medical, a primary care venture for chronic disease reversal, explained that simplifying digital tool access not only increases utilization among patients, but also increases efficiency for providers.

Members of the care team usually must use several different applications to provide virtual care to patients, Soetanto said. While technology to integrate these applications into one interface is not out yet, he said that he is hopeful a digital solution is on the horizon.

Nevertheless, making systems usable for clinicians in addition to patients is essential. After all, promoting the use of digital health tools among patients starts with the provider, Justin Everette, vice president of marketing at SR Health by SolutionReach, said during the discussion.

“If you're asking patients to embrace and adopt a new communication channel, they should feel as supported as possible,” Everette explained. “If staff and providers have questions, we don't want that creating noise and doubt, and confusion with patients. We want the full team on board to make it as easy as possible for patients.”

Additionally, Everette mentioned that building enthusiasm among providers for the ways digital tools can increase quality of care will assist in overall patient adoption.

At Lifestyle Medical, Soetanto found patient-provider conversations are the most beneficial way to encourage patients to start using virtual care technologies. While flyers and emails helped raise awareness of digital health, one-on-one conversations with providers urged patients to utilize the tools.

“That's what we found enabled patients to actually take the actions to start using the connected devices. We had to involve the clinicians to have those conversations with patients,” Soetanto explained.

To set patients up for sustained use of these digital tools, Soetanto explained that providers must invest time in walking them through how to use the technology.

“What we find with the onboarding is it really does take time. We have to be willing to invest the time. For each patient, we had about 20 minutes allocated to help them find where the app store is and set up where they're storing their password, and all that sort of stuff,” he said.

In addition to raising awareness for these tools and teaching patients how to use them, the providers must sustain personalized communication with patients using the technology.

Everette said that a SR Health survey of about 3,000 patients found that individuals of all ages reported 65 percent to 70 percent preferences for digital communication across the board when they were able to not only receive texts from providers, but also reach out to providers themselves via SMS.

In terms of addressing virtual care access barriers within the digital divide, Nooteboom noted that in instances where patients do not have access to video-chat, providers should connect via the telephone.

“Even though it's sort of a step back and you do miss out on some of those visual cues that you might get with a patient, to still be able to connect them with the provider, have a conversation, provide care and talk about next steps, is better than canceling their appointment or having a no-show,” Nooteboom said.

To learn more about omnichannel patient engagement technologies and hear from more patient experience experts, check out our library of on-demand Patient Experience Virtual Summit content.