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December 19, 2024
With technology at the forefront of the patient experience, healthcare providers are adopting a digital-first approach to managing care. A 2022 survey reported that 60% of patients want to use technology more for communicating with their healthcare teams and managing their care.
In answer to this need, digital healthcare models are evolving to integrate a range of services to enable pre- and post-surgical digital care journeys, all geared towards improving patient care, education, convenience and access, outcomes, and costs.
Imagine a virtual care companion across healthcare journeys that has the power to reduce anxiety, enhance recovery, and improve outcomes by enabling care both inside and outside hospital settings. That is what an intuitive, efficient, outcome-focused digital patient engagement platform can do. It has proven to be a critical element in elevating several aspects of a patients' recovery journey as well as a provider's operations and clinical efficiencies.
Here are top 3 reasons why leading healthcare organizations are investing in Digital Patient Engagement platforms.
Overcome Staffing Challenges
Clinicians and health executives are currently facing extensive staffing challenges, including nursing shortages, and the pressure to do more with less. So how can a healthcare provider do more with less without affecting the delivery of care? For leading hospitals and health systems, digital patient engagement solutions - that support patients both inside and outside the hospital and at home - have been the answer.
Remote monitoring capabilities
Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) solutions enable healthcare providers to more effectively monitor patient populations across multiple settings. Patients can be discharged sooner as a digital patient engagement solution acts as a virtual care companion that provides customized education, prompts and nudges the patient with reminders regarding their mobility, medication, nutrition, diet, etc.
Providers can monitor patients via dashboards and alerts, and watch out for early warning signs of complications (e.g. fever, incision issues) and collect patient responses, and track increased compliance that improves patient outcomes and reduces high cost services like length of stay, readmissions, and ED visits.
In a study published by SAGE Journals, the use of Remote Patient Monitoring technology was shown to reduce the 30-day readmission rate by 66%. And, patient access to readily available educational materials in the palm of a patient’s hand that they can reference anytime reduces the number of phone calls to the front line staff.
Leading healthcare organizations have seen as much as 59% reduction in phone calls and 68% fewer ED visits when using digital patient engagement platforms. Patient engagement tools empower care teams with intuitive technologies that reduce workload pressures and still deliver high-quality care. Doing more with less.
Better protocol compliance
Digital patient engagement tools also result in greater adherence to treatment protocols among the patient population since they have better access to their healthcare plan at all times and a better understanding of their own healthcare needs. This is even truer for efficient optimization of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programs, which requires patients to adhere to comprehensive pre and post-op protocols and for providers to track ERAS compliance and automate the collection of Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs).
Providers have more visibility on where their patients are in their healthcare journey, their mobility, recovery progress, opioid and medication consumption, etc. For providers, it is ultimately having access to an integrated platform that enables them to discharge patients sooner knowing they can stay connected and monitor patients. While patients have real-time access to evidence-based education, receive reminders and daily health checks to keep them on track, and more.
These tools allow healthcare providers to interact with patients more effectively, discharge them sooner with the confidence of having access to a virtual companion, and remotely monitor patients to provide timely, personalized care that is customized to the patient’s recovery journey.
Enterprise-wide Standardization of Care
Traditionally, the assumption has been that the provider knows best and the patient’s primary job is to follow instructions. Today, both patients and providers are looking for a more integrated and collaborative care delivery approach, and virtual care offerings through digital patient engagement platforms offer that … enhancing patient experience and standardization to deliver high-reliability care.
Reduce variation of care
According to the Journal of Precision Medicine, unwarranted variations in care account for at least 25% of costs in a healthcare system. Digital tools allow healthcare providers to standardize care across the system, which means that a patient’s journey from one hospital to another within the same healthcare network would be uninterrupted - they can receive the same education materials, same protocols and processes followed by different physicians, and the same patient experience.
For healthcare systems with multiple facilities, enterprise-wide standardization means reducing variation, which also means reducing errors, creating efficiencies, and delivering a higher quality of care.
Easy access to education
Investing in digital patient engagement solutions can lead to enhanced education accessibility and convenience. Patients can access evidence-based, service-line specific education libraries from their own, everyday devices, anywhere, at any time. Some digital platforms also provide automated reminders, to-do-lists, and surveys to ensure that they are able to track their recovery progress. These personalized learning pathways are tailored to each individual's needs and preferences, creating a more engaging experience for the patient.
Patients are consumers, too
Expanding and standardizing care access is being pushed forward by the increasing need, and want, for healthcare consumerism - an approach where the patient is treated as a consumer, as any other industry would. According to a McKinsey survey, 70 to 80 percent of respondents preferred digital solutions to carry out activities across their healthcare journeys. And this trend of digital adoption is not just limited to younger consumers.
With a rising consumer expectation for better access to care teams and easy-to-use education in today’s digitally-fuelled world, healthcare consumerism and digital patient engagement are closely linked. As patients look to actively participate in their healthcare, having a standardized approach to their care via digital engagement tools is becoming a key element that has a significant impact on the patient experience, patient satisfaction, and continuity of care.
Reduce Costs
It is expected that patients want a better digital healthcare experience, and for care teams to want to provide that. For healthcare organizations, investing in digital patient engagement tools brings in another key benefit of improving clinical outcomes while reducing in-patient costs.
According to a study published by the National Library of Medicine, readmission is one of the costliest episodes to treat in the United States, with annual costs reaching $41.3 billion for patients readmitted within 30 days after discharge. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) notes that 1 in 11 patients will be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, and these unplanned readmissions cost the system $2.3 billion annually.
Improve clinical outcomes and lower costs
Leveraging app-based Remote Patient Monitoring solutions, leading hospitals are revamping their readmissions prevention strategy, as well as enabling earlier discharge and the ability to catch complications before it escalates to ED visits or readmissions.
Over 35 academic studies have shown Digital Care Journey platforms like SeamlessMD to reduce hospital length of stay by 1-2 days, readmissions by 72%, ER visits by 47% and hospital costs by $8,100 per patient. Additionally, greater adherence to treatment protocols through the use of digital patient engagement tools reduces the costs associated with noncompliance.
Long-term cost benefits
Eliminating the cost burden and ongoing maintenance of standalone solutions, digital solutions can be integrated with existing Electronic Medical Record (EMR) or Electronic Health Record (EHR) and/or IT systems, to improve operational efficiencies and clinical workflows saving staff time. Turnkey integration of a digital patient engagement platform with a provider’s EHR streamlines collection of data as well as reduces manual paperwork processing within the patient chart, reducing overarching operational costs.
Digital Patient Engagement is a powerful tool for keeping patient-centricity at the forefront of your digital healthcare strategy. By leveraging it, healthcare organizations can not only improve health outcomes and the quality of care they provide but also build stronger relationships with their patients and meet patient expectations. Hospitals and health systems that empower patients with easy-to-access education, a standardized path to recovery, overcome staffing challenges, and enhance the patient and care team experience alike will invariably win.
If you are interested in exploring Digital Patient Engagement as part of your digital strategy, check out the KLAS Research Emerging Tech Spotlight on SeamlessMD, a Digital Care Journey platform that improves the overall quality of patient care and drives outcomes by enabling clinicians to monitor and stay connected with patients across their healthcare journey including before, during, and after hospitalization.
To see firsthand how a Digital Care Journey platform works, request a demo or email us at info@seamless.md.
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