KLAS Research is continuing to expand beyond its traditional focus on healthcare IT buyers and has put a focus on incorporating the voice of patients into their research. Here is why this is important.
Expanding Audience Focus
For decades KLAS Research (KLAS) has been a go-to resource for healthcare IT research that helps organization make informed technology decisions. Their traditional audience has been IT buyers at healthcare organizations which they continue to serve well.
However, KLAS has smartly recognized the need to expand beyond this audience to include other healthcare stakeholders. Over the past several years, the company has begun to offer content designed specifically to talk to clinicians about healthcare IT. More importantly KLAS, has incorporated the perspectives from this important stakeholder group into their research reports.
Bringing Patients into the Picture
Over the last two years, KLAS has put a focus on patient engagement technologies and have begun to incorporate the voice of patients in their research.
Healthcare IT Today was invited by KLAS to attend their 2023 Patient & Consumer Innovation Summit in Salt Lake City, UT. This two-day event was exclusively focused on patient engagement challenges and technologies. During the event, we spoke with Adam Gale, Co-Founder & CEO at KLAS about their focus on patients.
“We realized that there was a lot more to the story when it came to the lack of patient engagement,” explained Gale. “So we began to speak directly with patients and we discovered that the story is much more intense and much broader than we have been telling ourselves. We realized we needed to bring patients and the patient perspective into our work.”
Patient Engagement: Deceptively Challenging
One example of where the patient perspective has helped to reshape the IT conversation is in the area of self-scheduling solutions.
The technology to allow patients to schedule their own appointments through a healthcare provider’s website or app has been available for many years. However, this functionality is still not fully rolled out at most organizations in the US. Why is that?
The challenge lies in the multiple internal roadblocks that must be overcome to enable self-scheduling, including:
- Clinicians must make their schedules open and available to be booked by patients directly. Not easy given how they like to control their day
- Call centers must be properly resourced and trained to handle the influx of self-scheduling related questions
- Automated reminders must be crafted and sent to ensure patients arrive fully prepared for their appointments
- Health systems must ensure their administrative data, like clinician directories (with credentials, locations, availability, etc), are up to date so that patients can be matched to them
“It is deceptively challenging,” said Gale. “Patient engagement is tough to solve and we should be further than we are today. I am encouraged by the number of passionate drivers of patient engagement that are here for this event.”
Gale was justified in making his statement, the expert attendees at the Patient & Consumer Innovation Summit all shared keen insights and strategies that will help move patient engagement forward. By incorporating the patient voice into their reports and programming, KLAS is doing their part to ensure that this important perspective remains in-focus.
Watch the interview with Adam Gale to learn:
- Gale’s personal experience with an automated appointment reminder system
- Why Gale believes more work is needed to address patient engagement
Learn more about KLAS Research at https://klasresearch.com/
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