Digital Patient Experience — What’s Missing?
Patients typically can only set up an appointment with a doctor or another healthcare provider by phone. Sometimes this requires staying on hold, leaving voicemails or playing phone tag.
To get onboarded, patients need to fill out some forms, such as a new patient form. To do that they either need to come in 15 minutes early before their appointment and fill out paper forms by hand (often having to write their name, date of birth, their mailing address and phone numbers multiple times) if the appointment is in person, or, if it is a telehealth appointment (over the phone or Internet), the doctor’s office will mail patient forms so that the patient can fill them out at home and mail or fax them back. Or the office can offer the option to download the electronic version of their patient forms in PDF format, so that the patient can print and fill them out and then mail or fax them back.
If patients need to share their health records, they can either send them by fax, by mail or bring them in person.
If we count all the activities a patient has to go through from the initial contact to make an appointment until they are finally able to see the doctor, it is easy to notice that there is a lot of time and effort wasted throughout the process — all for no good reason. In virtually any other industry customers would not put up with this type of experience, especially since currently available technologies, which have been used by millions of people for more than a decade, can easily and securely help streamline and eliminate a lot of unnecessary wasted time and effort.
It is ironic that doctors typically choose their profession to provide care and treatment to patients to help them feel better, while they often make the process for their patients to get onboarded so painful, slow and frustrating, requiring patients to deal with paper forms, fax machines, phone tag, and other unnecessary activities, when all of it can be done easily and conveniently online in minutes, anywhere, on any device.
Messaging
Imagine, if in addition to being able to call the doctor’s office, you could have the option to send an instant message, or a text message, or a live chat message through the doctor’s website asking to schedule an appointment. And if their staff is busy or unavailable at that moment, they could respond to your text message in a few minutes. Messaging, being asynchronous, is easy, simple, real-time and highly interactive. If five patients are calling one receptionist at the same time, all but one will either have to wait on hold, or leave a voicemail and then play phone tag — which is probably not a desired experience for the unanswered four.
If the same five people were to send a text, instant or live chat message at the same time, they could all get responses in a reasonable period of time (it’s easier to handle a few discussions via chat in parallel than on the phone).
As an added benefit, all interactions via messaging are documented by default!
In addition, texting is less intrusive in comparison with phone calls for both parties.
Texting is more private: a patient can send text messages on sensitive topics in a public setting without worrying that other people nearby might overhear their conversation.
Also, if a patient speaks with a heavy accent, or if a connection is not very stable and the person on the other end of the phone line is breaking up, it would be easier to understand what they are trying to communicate by text. Texting could be even better than using an automated live caption. 😊
Texting doesn’t have to be limited to mobile devices either. There are a number of convenient options for texting on a desktop, for example, by using the Google Voice desktop app, iMessage on Macs, or specialized HIPAA-compliant secure messaging apps, like Qliq.
Online Forms
Imagine if the office could offer you an option to fill out and submit your patient forms online (e.g., forms.officeflo.health/samplepatientform), without having to download forms, print them out, fill them out by hand and return them to the doctor’s office by fax. Imagine if you could easily and conveniently fill out the form on your computer or your mobile device and submit it online electronically with just a push of a button.
Upload Portal
Imagine if they could offer you the secure option to use an upload portal to share all your health records (e.g., forms.officeflo.health/upload), a copy of your insurance card and your photo ID with the doctor’s office.
Online Waiting List
Imagine if they could offer you the opportunity to sign up for a waiting list online (e.g., https://signup.officeflo.health) so that if an earlier appointment slot becomes available due to a cancellation or another change in the doctor’s schedule, you would be notified in real-time at your preferred method of contact, such as by text message or by email.
Telehealth
Imagine, that instead of the doctor’s office having to send you a link to join a video (telehealth) session with the doctor, and you needing to keep that link and the credentials until your appointment time, you could just go to the doctor’s website and press one button to start a telehealth visit (e.g., https://officeflo.entrespace.com/meet) without having to enter any user ID or password, and then turn on captions so that you can read what is your doctor saying in real-time.
Imagine, if instead of sending you a procedure report by fax, the doctor’s office could send you a copy electronically, so that you can read it in its original high-quality format with color, as opposed to the greyed-out black and white that typically comes out of the fax machine.
Imagine, if your doctor’s website, in addition to showing the basic information about providers, the office, the schedule, and the services, could allow patients to
- click on a link or a button to call the office from a mobile device (without patients having to copy and paste, or manually enter the phone number), or
- click on a link or a button to send an instant/text message, or
- click on a link or a button to display directions on their mobile device (without having to copy and paste, or manually enter the office address), or
- click on a link or a button to access the patient portal (without having to create bookmarks), or
- click on a link or a button to make a payment online (without having to send a check or credit card form in an envelope).
In conclusion
It would be reasonable to expect that patient interactions with healthcare organizations to be at least as convenient and frictionless as their interactions with companies in other industries, such as banks, insurance or retail.
