Wednesday, February 22, 2023

What's impacting patient experience at your practice?

Imagine going to the doctor for your annual checkup, and he or she pulls out files for a different patient, references medications you’re not taking, and starts discussing tests you’ve never had. A clinical mix-up like that would hurt your confidence in your physician and potentially even prompt you to find a new one.


Like the clinical experience, it takes just one problem or inconvenience to affect the patient financial experience. Frustrated patients often feel that any issue is their providers’ fault — even if it’s not. From a patient’s perspective, every part of the healthcare experience, from payments to scheduling to billing, is run by the provider. The behind-the-scenes reality of external partners and third-party technology stays behind the scenes, and patients base their experience on what they can see.

Further complicating things is the fact that outdated routines and procedures can hinder efforts to streamline the patient experience, resulting in more frustrations, lower quality of care, and potentially a loss of patient loyalty. Because of this, cultivating the patient experience is a commitment. Healthcare providers have to ensure the process is as seamless, accurate, and pleasant as possible — as consistently as possible.

Cultivation is key to improving healthcare


While negative experiences can drive patients away, positive experiences can engage lifelong patients who refer their friends, family members, and neighbors. For healthcare providers, that means communicating with patients even when they’re not in the office for an issue or checkup.

According to SDL, it takes up to two years to build customer loyalty — that’s two years of positive, strong experiences. To keep yourself ahead of this curve, you have to find ways to proactively provide best-in-class experiences that keep patients coming back.

The easiest way to start? Identify outdated routines and procedures that could be detracting from the patient experience. Below are four common problems that can be proactively addressed:

Problem No. 1: Sending cookie-cutter communications


Nothing is more personal than health, so it’s important to provide patients with personalized information that addresses their unique needs. Generalized, templated mail or email statements don’t suffice. Patients will lose, delete, or ignore these blanket communications.

Instead, providers should identify specific segments of their patient base and develop communications for each. A good omnichannel approach provides an integrated customer experience through various channels, including text and chat. This approach to improving healthcare empowers customers to choose how they interact with the people in charge of their patient bill care.


Problem No. 2: Using convoluted pricing


As healthcare bills become increasingly difficult to understand, patients progressively demand price transparency. More patients are using high-deductible health plans, which means they’re the payers rather than their insurance companies. With the rise of unemployment, this percentage will only increase.

Because they are now responsible for payment, patients need to know before their appointments how much services will cost. This enables them to be better informed when making important decisions. Price transparency creates trust, and we all know trust creates a great experience and increased patient loyalty in healthcare.


Problem No. 3: Replacing human interaction with technology


In general, the impact of technology in healthcare has been positive. With automation, machine learning, and cutting-edge technologies, many providers have made tremendous advancements in the level of service they’re able to provide patients. But that dependence on technology can also cause providers to rely too heavily on machines at the expense of human connection.

A successful patient interaction must have a healthy balance of both. Take advantage of automation, but make sure patients can also communicate with a member of their patient bill care team when they need help. That way, technology becomes an asset to augment the patient experience — not a distraction from it.


Problem No. 4: Relying on separate back-office systems


Many healthcare providers still use separate systems for most components of the patient experience. Unfortunately, those technology systems don’t always “talk” to each other. If there’s a glitch in one, it can cause undetected problems throughout the operation. Patients tend to see all of these separate components as one overall experience, so using a single integrated system will help create a seamless solution for both patients and providers.

Providers that prefer not to completely centralize their systems should take the time to research systems and providers that sync up well with native integrations and built-in data-transferring capabilities. This can help them mitigate the risk of technological mix-ups that could detract from the patient experience.

It takes a long time to garner customer loyalty, and it can all vanish based on just one bad patient experience. Conversely, an excellent experience can reengage patients and increase their overall satisfaction levels. For this reason, it’s vital to carefully vet any third-party platforms you might use. The entire care continuum must be flawless to ensure patients always feel cared for, heard, and secure.


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Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Have a better day: Make your bed

I must confess that I have an addiction! Not the drug-seeking kind of addict but a college graduation speech junkie. I have watched countless graduation speeches by presidents, politicians, college professors, professional athletes, movie stars, comedians, and titans of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. However, one graduation speech stands out—Admiral William McRaven's graduation speech to the University of Texas Class of 2014.


This YouTube video has been viewed over eight million times, making it the most-viewed graduation speech.

(You can view this incredible speech on YouTube)

McRaven was a Navy SEAL and the Commander of the famous SEAL Team Six, which was responsible for organizing and overseeing the execution of Operation Neptune Spear. This special ops raid led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011.

So, we are speaking about a tough, disciplined, highly motivated, and dedicated man. You wouldn't want to be on his sh*t list, as he is a professional killer!

His graduation speech discusses basic SEAL training, six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacle courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep, and always being cold, wet, and miserable. It is six months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.The training also seeks to find students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure, and hardships. McRaven provides ten lessons he learned from basic SEAL training that has stood him in good stead, and I would like to discuss his first lesson—first, make your bed.

(This is the title of a book with the same name as the ten lessons mentioned in the graduation speech. Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World by Admiral William McRaven)

The drill instructor would inspect the student's bed every morning in basic SEAL training. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard, and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed. It seemed ridiculous at the time since they were aspiring to be real warriors and battle-hardened SEALs. It was a simple task, but they had to make their bed to perfection every morning. The wisdom of this simple act has an incredible message that is valuable for physicians.


Suppose you accomplish the day's first task, regardless of its simplicity. In that case, it will give you a small sense of pride. It will encourage you to do another task to perfection, followed by other tasks completed similarly. By the end of the day, that one task will have turned into many completed tasks. A small accomplishment at the beginning of the day will also reinforce the fact that little things matter. You must do the little things right to do the big things right.

So how does making your bed relate to our profession and the practice of medicine? In the past, and for most of my medical career, I was always rushing—make rounds quickly before surgery, arrive at the operating room on time, finish surgery and rush to the office to see patients, which was frequently 30-45 minutes behind schedule, skip lunch to see patients who were delayed during the morning clinic, hurry back to the hospital at the end of the day for evening rounds, return phone calls, then make every effort to be home for dinner with my family. You may know that routine, and it's no wonder that fifty percent of doctors experience burnout.

The beginning of every day positively or negatively impacts the rest of your day. If you have an initial positive experience, even as small as making your bed, the rest of the day may go smoothly. On the other hand, if you have obstacles or problems at the beginning of the day, this will likely impact the rest of your day.

The easiest task to start your day off in a positive direction is to be on time for your first patients in your clinic or office. This simple task can render the rest of the day moving smoothly from one activity or patient to the next. It is impossible to accomplish this task of being on time every morning. If you are thirty to forty-five minutes late for the clinic, you will play catch-up all day, and you and your staff will be exhausted at the end of the day. Let's be honest; we can do a much better job than we may have done in the past.

Let's not overlook that the number one complaint patients have about their healthcare experience is the difficulty obtaining an appointment and then waiting for the doctor once they have arrived in the office. Both situations can be resolved.

Bottom Line: As Admiral McRaven said, "If you want to change the world, start by making your bed. If you are a Navy SEAL, make your bed; if you are a doctor, see your patients on time! The same applies to our medical practices; we must start with the little things, like being on time for our patients. Then, all the bigger things will be much easier if we start every day with small success. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right."


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Monday, February 20, 2023

The rise of contextual care and telehealth

The explosive increase in the use of telehealth resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has been a paradigm shift in changing how we think about the future of health care. During the first quarter of 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, the number of telehealth visits increased by 50% compared with the same period in 2019. This steep rise in the availability of virtual visits has likely helped prevent the spread of disease by keeping people out of crowded hospitals, and also enabled patients to connect with their doctors when most offices were closed.


Yet there is another benefit that is often overlooked. For the first time, clinicians have been able to get a “behind the scenes look” into their patient’s environment during telehealth visits. This can help them identify contextual clues, like background noises or living conditions, that could indicate particular impacts on a patient’s health and help determine a diagnosis or course of care. This has led to a new phenomenon in health care that organizations are just beginning to explore: contextual care.

According to the CDC, there are five primary categories that influence a person’s health: genetics, behavior, environmental and physical influences, medical care, and social factors. While in-office visits can offer providers insight into factors like behavior and genetics, it can be much harder to assess patients’ environmental and physical influences. Visibility into a patient’s living space can help providers identify social determinants of health (SDoH) that are impacting their wellbeing.

Moreover, because there are many environmental factors that patients may not even realize affect their health, they may neglect to mention certain relevant aspects of their lifestyle to their providers. Contextual care can help combat this problem by giving health care practitioners an insider’s view into patients’ living environments. Not only can they pick up on clues or signals based on what is going on in the background of a virtual care visit, but they can ask patients questions based on what they are observing and even ask patients to show them their medicine bottles or the inside of their refrigerator using their device’s camera.


Improving care based on visual and auditory clues


Poor living conditions can be associated with a wide range of health conditions, such as respiratory infections, asthma, lead poisoning, injuries, and mental health concerns. All of these issues can have a significant impact on a patient’s comorbidities, and many of them may be overlooked in a typical appointment. Subtle visual or auditory signals that providers see or hear during a virtual visit can be useful for providing additional context about their lifestyle. For example, what are the patient’s living conditions like? Do they have many young children who can be overheard in the background? Does it appear as though they live in a rural area without convenient access to certain resources? Similarly, contextual care can offer clues about a patient’s general safety -- if they are living in dangerous or hostile conditions, providers may be able to pick up on cues during a virtual visit and intervene as appropriate.


Sharing the home environment via video


One struggle patients may encounter during in-person appointments is forgetting exactly which medications they are taking. Especially for people who have complex treatment regimens, it can be difficult to keep track of them all and report them accurately during medical visits. During virtual health care encounters, if a provider asks which prescriptions a patient takes, it could be as easy as running to the medicine cabinet to double-check the name and dosage. This enables patients to share more accurate, detailed descriptions and can result in more informed decision-making on the part of the provider. This is also applicable for patients on special diets. By scheduling at-home virtual care appointments, patients can easily provide a look into their kitchen cabinets or refrigerators to share what they’re purchasing and seek input from providers on how to better tailor their diets to their therapeutic needs.


The broader benefits of virtual care


In addition to providing insight about a patient’s access to healthy food, virtual care can provide new tools to help people better address other SDoH barriers such as a lack of accessible transportation. Every year, an estimated 3.6 million people in the United States do not receive medical care due to transportation barriers. Virtual services, such as nurse triage, can help a person determine whether they need in-person care or whether they can receive care via telemedicine, reducing the need for transportation. And, when patients do need to see a provider in-person, digital health tools can help create faster linkages to transportation like ridesharing services, or social services that provide transportation. When combined with the contextual care factors that providers have access to during virtual visits, patients have access to more well-rounded, personalized care that better serves their needs.

Contextual care and the benefits it offers can contribute significantly and positively to a patient’s health. From living conditions to diet and medications, patients deserve to have a deeper understanding of how their circumstances are impacting their wellbeing, and contextual care enables them to share more thorough and accurate information to those that can provide medical care and advice. With only 10 to 20 percent of a person’s health outcomes being attributed to medical care, and the remaining to societal, behavioral, and genetic factors, it is key that organizations begin to look at a person’s health from a holistic point of view, rather than a condition or disease-focused one.

As society looks for ways to improve the quality of and access to health care, especially for underserved populations, the ability for virtual care to offer important contextual clues that could improve a provider’s diagnosis and enhance the patient’s health should not be overlooked -- yet another reason why virtual care must remain accessible in a post-pandemic world.


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