5 Patient Engagement Lessons From Outside Healthcare
We call it patient engagement; everyone else calls it customer relationship management
By Raj Toleti, CEO of HealthGrid
Healthcare technology strategists, CIOs, and medical leaders typically think of patient engagement in purely clinical terms: better medication management, strict adherence to care plans, and motivating improvements in diet and exercise habits instead of just talking about it. But it’s a lot more than that.
Patient engagement actually is what everyone outside of healthcare calls customer relationship management (CRM). In fact, the definition of CRM includes practices, strategies, and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.
The new payment models around value-based care — with reimbursements set on performance as measured via quality metrics — is teaching healthcare what finance companies, communications vendors, and social media sites figured out a long time ago. Healthcare must create quality customer engagements that start with meeting patient expectations first while providing them with follow-up service they rightfully deserve.
Healthcare can learn many lessons from industries further down the road in their evolution of CRM. Here are five takeaways to consider.
- Offer Simple, Immediate Feedback
In the finance industry, customers of portfolio managers expect to have real-time updates, and the information must be readily accessible in a language they can understand. In the automobile industry, customers cannot be made to feel taken advantage of when it comes to buying a car or getting a car serviced. Salespeople cannot use confusing, technical lingo that customers cannot follow, or they will walk away and go to another dealer.
For healthcare, this translates to letting patients know there will be a follow-up message after an appointment or episode of care, and be sure to follow through when the time comes. Also, physicians and nurses have to constantly remember literacy gaps create a disconnect with patients. It’s essential patients can understand the information given to them, so they know all the pertinent details about their conditions and treatment plans.
- Give Patients Actionable Messages
DirecTV used to text customers late-payment reminders, but customers still had to remember to make a payment later, from a different site. DirecTV realized that with one change their reminders could be actionable. In the latest service upgrade, customers simply text “yes” to pay with a card on file — and the transaction is completed through automation.
In the same way, healthcare can streamline many processes using this same approach, such as making appointment confirmations and bill-paying reminders actionable for patients via text message.
- Engage With Real-Time Response
Would we use Facebook, Twitter, Netflix or Rhapsody nearly as much if they weren’t readily accessible on smartphones and tablets as well as televisions, desktops, and even connected gaming systems? Thanks to these innovative services, their customers — and your patients — expect instantaneous transactions.Healthcare needs to catch up. Patients hate long wait times. Providers who learn more efficient time management will survive in the coming months and years as patients realize they have multiple choices among caregivers. Those who maintain the status quo of providing more time in the waiting room versus physician face time will not.
- Personalize Service
This expectation is streamlined across most industries and companies, with retailing, auto purchasing, and personal finance making great strides this decade. The message is clear: when a brand makes an effort to target specific audiences with personalized ads, it makes the potential customer feel as if the brand fits in with his or her lifestyle. Amazon led the way by building its empire on personalization. The online retailer uses search data and purchasing behavior analysis to understand and anticipate future purchases of the customer.
Personalization of messaging from healthcare providers reinforces patients’ confidence in their choice of provider. Opportunities for this include personalized follow-ups, which we refer to as evidence-based messaging, or tailored direct messages they can understand and respond to. Not only will this build patient confidence, but it reduces anxiety when information is fully understood and available to the consumer.
- Fix Care Coordination
When we go out to eat at a favorite chain restaurant, stay at a particular hotel, or fly the same airline, there’s a reason we subscribe to loyalty programs and earn rewards — and they earn our repeat business. And that reason is we receive consistent quality of experience no matter the location or circumstances.
Patients become frustrated when doctors and hospital staff are not on the same page with their patient information. Yet this is what happens in many healthcare scenarios, especially complex episodes of care such as knee and hip replacements. Health systems that can better coordinate care will create a higher-quality, lower-cost experience for patients — meeting their expectations — and win those frequent fliers as loyal repeat customers.
These lessons learned from other industries can help healthcare reinvent itself as competition across health systems becomes more intense for shrinking payments in the coming years. Healthcare doesn’t have to recreate the wheel; it can take its cues from customer-service success stories all around us. When patients — and customers — are better taken care of, we all win. Improving service is the first step toward meeting their needs in ways healthcare has traditionally underperformed.
About The Author
Raj Toleti is CEO and founder of HealthGrid who believes technology is the key to building meaningful experiences in every stage of healthcare.