Patient Engagement: How To Nail The Most Critical Aspect Of Healthcare Management?

Introduction

The growing consumerization of the healthcare industry and the slow emergence of the digital healthcare landscape has changed how patients are consuming healthcare services. This shift from a volume-based system to a value-based one means that the patient’s healthcare experience is becoming primary and patients are expecting more from the providers.

In this scenario, patient engagement is gaining ground as the discerning factor for measurement of successful patient experiences. While other industries such as retail and banking have realized the importance of consumer engagement, the healthcare sector is slowly catching up in prioritizing patient engagement.

What Is Patient Engagement?

As per a report by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), patient engagement involves “providers and patients working together to improve health”. This essentially means patients being actively engaged in the decision-making process concerning their treatment, medicines and other aspects of their healthcare. Greater engagement eventually leads to better health outcomes for patients. This is because the patients are empowered to make choices regarding their care which results in them being healthier. Healthcare providers too are, therefore, providing patients with more control over their care so as to meet their individual requirements.

The Need And Scope Of Patient Engagement

Patient engagement has a three-fold objective in the present healthcare landscape:

• To improve patient experience — With patients gaining more control of their care, healthcare providers are now more responsible for creating a seamless experience for them. For example, in the Affordable Care Act, patients can also seek reimbursement based on their healthcare experience from the provider.
• To advance population health — As the value-based model is getting prominence in the health industry, a patient-centered approach with a focus on maintaining population health is becoming the norm. Various programs such as Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) or EHR meaningful use programs are playing an important role in population health management.
• To lower the costs of care — Patient engagement can increase efficiency, reduce out-migration and, thereby, reduce costs of care.

Patient engagement instills a sense of trust between healthcare providers and receivers. This helps the care receivers i.e. patients in sticking on with a particular healthcare provider. At a time when the entire gamut of patient communication has shifted online, the service should also be directed towards bettering the online experience. Around 72% of US adults seek health information online. In this case, there is immense potential of improving patient engagement by including steps like providing easy access to health records, treatment reminders, etc.

Image Credit

Benefits Of Patient Engagement

Patient engagement brings benefits not only to the healthcare provider but also to the receiver.

• Builds Trust — It creates trust in a patient’s mind and convinces them to choose you as their trusted health partner.
• Provides Satisfactory Experience — When patients will have more avenues for interaction, such as online portals, at their disposal to engage with their healthcare providers and more information to make better healthcare decisions, then they’ll have a better experience.
• Improve Efficiency — A patient portal with accurate data provided by patients themselves will definitely increase the efficiency of services.
• Reduced Costs — A report by Deloitte has found out that the percentage of patients researching on cost information has doubled in the last three years from 14 to 27%. More and more patients are seeking to get the most value out of their health expenditures. Here, by involving patients in their own care through patient engagement, sudden illnesses can be minimized, thereby reducing treatment costs.

Patient engagement has a direct impact on health outcomes. This can be proven from a study carried out by Health Dialog. A group of 170,000 patients was divided into two groups among which one received standard support while the other received customized decision-making support. In the case of the latter group, it was found that they had 5.4% lower medical expenditures, 12.5% fewer hospital admissions and 20.9% fewer heart surgeries.

The Importance Of Communication In Patient Engagement

Patient-physician communication has been the subject matter for research since the last few years and is one of the key factors in increasing patient engagement. Effective communication leads to increased patient satisfaction, trust, and psychological well-being. It can also impact positive outcomes in certain diseases. Ineffective communication, on the other hand, led to several negative outcomes such as higher readmission rates for inpatients.

5 Steps To Devising A Successful Patient Engagement Strategy

A successful patient engagement strategy can be created with the following 5 steps:

• Define Organizational Goals — The primary step is to assess your present stage and what stage you want to reach in terms of engagement. You may also discuss with your senior management to arrive at a definition of engagement that meets your organizational objectives. Once that is done, you can create a typical scenario of how your practice will look like after implementing a successful engagement strategy. There can be more than one scenarios to describe specific departments, situations or cases. Based on these scenarios, you’ll be able to develop specific goals and their subsequent outcomes. Based on these goals, specific actions can be planned out at the individual, healthcare team and the organizational level.
• Create An Engagement-Oriented Approach — Successful implementation of an engagement strategy will require active participation from leadership, providers, staff, and patients. This can only happen when a culture of engagement is created within the practice. Laying down clear policies and procedures will help in getting the desired action. Some tips for creating an engagement-oriented approach are:
• Explain how the staff plays a critical role in ensuring patient engagement
• Explain the role patient engagement plays for the practice
• Explain how technology can complement their work and assure how it can’t replace their work.
• Have a clear policy and enforce it with procedures and rewards.
• Adopt Latest Technologies — Adopting the latest technologies can simplify the process greatly. By creating patient portals, patient-provider communication can be improved by enabling patients to check test reports, medical records, and information. They can also make administrative tasks such as making registration and appointments easier. They can introduce important practices like online payments and electronic statements. With the introduction of live operator and automated messaging more patients can be retained, increasing loyalty. Choosing a patient portal that can be connected to your EHR, billing and practice management systems is advisable. Don’t forget to ensure that the portal meets the required safety and privacy measures. You can also use a platform like SmartKarrot to boost your patient engagement. It comprises several features such as SmartSegmentation which helps you increase your member profiles by communicating to the right segment. You can also use the SmartSurvey feature to measure the efficacy of your efforts.
• Empower Patients To Become Active Participants — Patients can be involved in communication and encouraged to become active participants. This will not only provide effective feedback on the processes but also whet their interest. Some of the ways you can incorporate patient input are:
• Surveys
• Reviews or testimonials
• Involvement in committees
• Measure Progress And Adapt — Once you’ve implemented the process, you can measure your actions against the targets to check the progress. An example of a metric you can track is how patients are using technology to reach their health goals. You’ll need to monitor certain metrics such as the number of patient signups, email ids collected, etc. Establishing a rewards or recognition process based on goals reached can get patients interested in participating.

In the present healthcare ecosystem, patient engagement should form an essential part of all operations. If you haven’t already incorporated patient engagement in your plan yet, you can get your stakeholders involved to initiate it. All patient engagement strategies should, in the end, take account of changes and adapt themselves accordingly.