Utilizing an enterprise EHR system is like traveling on a cruise ship. You and hundreds of fellow passengers are on the same journey, for better or worse. The ship is designed to keep everyone onboard happy. You know which destinations lie ahead, but the schedule may be impacted due to weather.
But what if you want to stay a little longer in one port? What if you need to hurry up and meet friends at a different destination? What if you’re a little seasick and want to slow down? You’re out of luck. There’s no diverting the cruise ship from its set route, even when passengers aren’t on board.
We often observe this in healthcare. Many complex organizations benefit from the immense scope and scale of an enterprise EHR to care for a broad patient population, but one size does not fit all. Patient experience and engagement varies widely. Healthcare is a competitive market. In many regions, patients have a choice about where to seek care. Without IT tools in place to smooth the patient journey, this looks like:
Patients’ unique needs would benefit from speedboat flexibility to react to market conditions as they change. Enter patient engagement platforms: a solution that natively integrates with your EHR can implement new outreach strategies and realize results now.
In competitive marketplaces, this is not a luxury but a necessity. If you don’t have the ability to reach patients now, you risk losing them to a facility that can. How do we know? Because 87% of surveyed healthcare decision-makers agree that ability to compete in a marketplace is a driver for implementing patient engagement solutions (source). Fortunately, you don’t have to lag behind.
Fill the Cracks, Fast
What if your organization could start seeing changes in a matter of weeks?
Most systems are designed to work when everything is going right: when patients are fully engaged with all of their tools. In an enterprise health system, the multitude of available tools can flow through a patient portal for a streamlined patient experience. But data shows that more than half of patients aren’t using patient portals, even after receiving opportunities to register.
A platform approach to patient engagement can integrate into the native EHR and bridge some of the cracks with a medium that everyone uses: SMS text messaging.
Unlike enterprise EHR modules, API-integrated platform solutions can be implemented and launched within 45 days – enabling your organization to not just keep up with the Joneses, but surpass their assets.
Break Free from Boilerplate
Why are 89% of patients between the ages of 17-74 reluctant to use online scheduling options? Reasons include lack of access to internet, lack of awareness that options exist, low computer skills, and resistance to changing habits (source). It can be challenging to change their ways when limited to boilerplate messaging options and a set number of scenarios. To activate these patients and keep them within a healthcare network, organizations must be able to think outside the box – and step outside of boxes, too.
Partnership with a flexible patient success platform keeps patients on that journey. Over 1,000 messaging scenarios, and the ability to develop more, will accommodate your unique organization – and your patients – right from implementation.
Don’t Despair: Automate
When complexity abounds, organizations hesitate to adopt patient engagement technologies because their processes can vary wildly across the system. Specialities following different workflows keeps organizational knowledge siloed and ensures that valuable staff time is required to keep patients in-network. Many are surprised to learn that complexity doesn’t have to be a barrier to modernization. In fact, implementation of a platform is often an opportunity to simplify workflows and identify streamlined ways to automate tired processes. Administrators and staff alike are often pleasantly surprised to learn that people don’t have to manually undertake every step of the scheduling and intake processes.
The perfect mix
Automation is a hot topic right now, but it’s important to deploy a strategy that keeps humans involved when necessary. Sometimes it’s best to simplify the easy stuff and leave the personal touch for when it’s needed most. Main Line Health saved 15,000 minutes of human time per month when they implemented Digital Call Deflection. Inbound calls could be diverted to conversational SMS text messaging, enabling the call center to focus on patient interactions that benefited from a human touch.
What next?
Learn how an out-of-box solution can reach and activate the 40% of patients who aren’t using your organization’s patient portal. Request a demo here.
Patient care extends well beyond the minutes that a clinician and patient pass in an exam room together. The ensuing visit notes are just one piece of the continuum. Healthcare systems have long integrated selections from a smorgasbord of technology tools to document care, optimize practice operations, and integrate patients’ financial journeys…with varying degrees of interoperability and success.
Moving into 2024, healthcare providers report momentum towards consolidating tech stacks, looking to existing solutions for add-on capabilities before evaluating new vendors. Many EHR vendors are expanding beyond their core functionality of care documentation with solutions across the patient care journey. But organizations should tread with care.
Enterprise EHR is not one-size-fits-all
Every organization has unique aspects that influence operation. The gap between patient expectations and system capabilities can be massive, presenting many opportunities for patients to fall into the chasm between.
What’s holding patients back? Research indicates that barriers to self-service include access to the internet, lack of awareness of services, low computer skills, and change in the habit of making appointments over the phone or face-to-face. But even for patients who engage with technology, a challenging process is likely to disenchant and deter. Patients expect a frictionless experience. Anything less will stand between them and a completed appointment. No pressure, right?
The good news is, in a competitive marketplace, healthcare systems have a huge opportunity to deliver a seamless experience to keep patients coming back.
Most systems are designed to work when everything is going right: when patients are fully engaged with all of their tools. But data shows that only about 20-30% of patients make it through a manual scheduling process to a completed appointment. In their wake, they leave the debris of administrative burden, network leakage, missed appointments, and ultimately: lost revenue.
To capture maximum value from an enterprise EHR, you will need supplemental capabilities and patient engagement guardrails designed to keep the other 70 – 80% of patients in network.
10 Ways that Patient Engagement Platforms Support Patient Retention
Simple, right?
Having all of these in place is great, but if they don’t integrate deeply with your EHR, your organization won’t reap maximum returns. Overworked staff can’t spend time tracking these things down manually. For true Patient Success, these workflows must be deeply embedded in a native EHR, automating processes with closed-loop referrals and EHR writebacks.
Navigating the happy path in the complex landscape of enterprise EHRs requires a thoughtful approach to patient engagement. By addressing gaps with personalized strategies, proactive waitlist management, and consideration of generational nuances, healthcare providers can guide patients seamlessly through their journey, leading to improved outcomes and increased value from their EHR investments.
RESOURCE: Learn more about how Luma integrates with EHRs like Epic to support patient retention.
OrthoNebraska is an innovator in orthopedic care, but accessing that care was challenging for patients. OrthoNebraska’s leaders knew they wanted to completely overhaul the patient experience and create a unified digital front door – not just look for a quick fix.
“We wanted a great consumer journey to deliver ease of access as well as quality care,” said Nikki Green, senior manager of patient access. “But we didn’t want to select a vendor that would create redundancy or be unable to scale with us as we grew.”
The first challenge to tackle: high no-show rates. Instead of requiring patients to call to change their appointments, which led to no-shows and thousands in lost revenue, OrthoNebraska envisioned becoming the first orthopedic practice in the region to offer self-scheduling.
Because OrthoNebraska treats such a wide range of conditions, “implementing self-scheduling seemed like a daunting task,” said Green. “We need to get patients to the right provider. The patient’s current needs, their age range, their clinical history, the approach they’re looking for – all of these factors affect scheduling.”
Deep integration with their Cerner EHR was a must-have. Other vendors OrthoNebraska evaluated weren’t equipped to match each patient with the right appointments and providers for them, according to Green.
Ultimately, Green and her colleagues chose Luma as the foundation for their digital front door.
After integrating Luma with their Cerner system, “we felt more comfortable giving that self-scheduling power to patients,” said Green. “We were able to trust that the technical build itself would direct patients to the right provider.”
The choice of a platform over a scheduling point solution has already allowed OrthoNebraska to solve more inefficiencies on their journey to a unified, simple patient experience.
“Our nurses are very busy, so patients calling with clinical questions would need to leave a message,” said Green. “With Luma, nurses can respond to patients via text while they’re multitasking, which has been huge for patient success and nurses’ job satisfaction.”
Green sees wins like these as the first steps in OrthoNebraska’s digital transformation.
“It’s exciting that huge improvements like self-scheduling are just the beginning. We’re confident that Luma will complement the initiatives we’ll tackle in the future.”
Want to learn more? Book a quick call with a Luma + Oracle Health expert.