The following is an interview with Vik Krishnan, General Manager of Intrado Digital Workflows.
Intrado recently administered a survey of College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) members, including executives from a variety of leading healthcare organizations, about their patient engagement goals, wish lists and priorities for 2022. Below is a discussion with healthcare executive Vik Krishnan, General Manager of Intrado Digital Workflows, which includes HouseCalls Pro, about what these results mean for the future of patient communication.
What did the survey reveal about the priorities of health IT executives in the areas of patient engagement for 2022?
First of all, we asked these executives about their patient engagement goals this year since these objectives will drive the types of investments they make for 2022. The majority of respondents (91%) said they want to improve the patient experience. Other top answers included increasing visit volumes (68%) or reducing the workload for call center or other staff (49%)—both of which are directly tied to improving financial performance. These responses align with what we hear from health system leaders as the reasons they turn to automated, digital patient engagement. That’s because digital engagement—especially via automated, SMS communications—can check all these boxes in a synergistic way, meaning health systems don’t have to choose one mission-critical objective over the others.
In terms of the investments these executives plan to make, the top reasons aligned with these same themes. There is an interest in systems that make it easy and seamless to communicate with patients via SMS for different workflows (51% included it among their top three priorities) and enhancements to websites including chatbot technology (34% said it was in their top three). Given patient preferences around SMS messaging, this makes sense. Only a small percentage (6%) say investing in call center software is their top priority, which demonstrates the shift away from some of these manual patient engagement activities, and toward greater engagement automation.
How do these executives plan to meet these goals?
As we noted earlier, automation was a thread that ran through a lot of the survey answers. These executives are looking at automating specific workflows via SMS and chatbot-powered technologies. Especially with so much of healthcare focused on virtual health—it makes sense that digital patient engagement is next in line. By adding chatbots to the mix, you can also solve the issue of personalization, making sure that this automated engagement still has a human-like touch.
With regard to the specific types of workflows health system leaders are focused on, the vast majority (83%) are already automating some type of simple appointment reminder, but less than one-third (30%) can currently offer any kind of SMS-based self-scheduling or rescheduling for patients. This is noteworthy since offering self-scheduling via text can positively impact all of their top objectives—including improving the patient experience and bolstering revenue through increased visit volumes, fewer no-shows and lower call center burden.
There are also other opportunities to do more. Given the latest advancements in automated patient engagement platforms, health systems need to think bigger in terms of how such platforms can improve the patient experience. Today you can go beyond appointment scheduling to complete a wider variety of tasks that not only boost revenue by reducing no-shows, but also address gaps in care and improve quality of care. For instance, only 19% of these executives are using their engagement tool for referral management, even though this area is a huge source of revenue leakage and call center staff burden. Just 38% are using digital engagement and automation to for pre-procedure patient communications, including, for example, instructions in advance of procedures like colonoscopies.
As for the workflows these executives want to automate in the future, there was a significant consensus around this answer. Nearly half of respondents (47%) say they want to automate appointment self-scheduling or rescheduling directly from SMS messages, which aligns with the benefits of this approach I just described.
This survey revealed that more than one-third (37%) of executives have concerns about the IT resources required to implement or maintain an automated engagement system. Given that their providers are already bogged down by EHR-related tasks, what would you say to those who share those concerns?
That’s a valid concern. While there are certainly systems out there that put a significant burden on the end user and IT resources, there are also platforms built from the ground up to be simple for both IT staff and users to manage. When weighing this consideration, the most important feature to consider is the level of EHR integration. By allowing people to use the systems they are already using every day (the EHR), you’re removing the learning curve. And with a platform that’s deeply embedded in the EHR, you aren’t adding more tasks. You’re actually taking manual data input away, saving valuable hours and resources.
There is no reason for people to be on the phone calling patients anymore. Patients aren’t answering. Instead, we need to make it fast and easy for providers to simply reach out directly from the EHR, targeting the right patient with the right information by SMS.
As evidence of this, of the leaders we surveyed, 87% acknowledged that the level of EHR integration offered is one of the top three most important factors they consider when evaluating a potential IT investment. This answer even topped other important considerations like cost, ROI and ease of deployment.
There is one final reason why EHR integration really matters, and that’s because an overwhelming majority of executives (85%) said they prefer for their EHR to serve as the “single source of truth” for all patient data, including the documentation of patient engagement activities and reporting.
So EHR integration actually addresses a variety of concerns noted by these executives:
- It allows for two-way communication with patients to be recorded directly in the EHR without manual effort.
- It makes the EHR serve as the single source of truth
- It reduces the workload of your IT staff because it allows users to work in a system that they already know and use daily
- It leverages the significant investment already made in the EHR implementation, processes, templates and staff training.
What are some of the biggest patient engagement challenges these executives are facing as we continue dealing with the pandemic?
Some of them are trying to achieve some pretty lofty goals, as we noted above, but don’t have the right systems in place. For example, 60% are still using patient portals to meet all their patient engagement needs, even though portals suffer from low adoption and a lack of active engagement. Portals can be cumbersome for patients, requiring these individuals to remember passwords and navigate the system to complete various actions. Even though we know from their responses that these organizations really want to move toward SMS-based communications, and research shows that patients prefer SMS, just 11% of respondents said that texting is their top communication channel.
This doesn’t mean the end of patient portals—because as many of these executives said, they still want to drive users to their portal. It’s simply about choosing an automated engagement approach that complements these systems. For instance, using automated SMS to support real-time scheduling by patients can help close preventive care gaps, but patients could still rely on a portal for lengthier and more time-consuming activities like reviewing their health records. It’s about using the right tool for the right job. And for all of the reasons we just discussed, this kind of hybrid approach is a win-win for healthcare organizations and their patients.
About Vik Krishnan
Vik Krishnan is the General Manager of Intrado Digital Workflows, which includes Intrado’s Healthcare (HouseCalls Pro) business. Vik’s experience in the healthcare industry spans nearly 20 years. He was the Co-Founder and first CEO of CipherHealth, a digital patient engagement company. Through his work at Bain & Company, the Boston Consulting Group, and other boutique firms, he has spent years advising providers, payors, and the pharma industry on strategy and performance improvement. Vik has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Biomedical Engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
