Navigating healthcare systems has long been a complex and timely process for patients. With healthcare providers facing various challenges to adopt digital technologies, inefficiencies in transforming the patient experience are resulting in increased wait times and extra strain on care providers. At the same time, when a person’s health is on the line, unnecessary delays and complications experienced accessing care can create additional stress. This issue has only been acerbated during the pandemic as the NHS faces a huge backlog, with over 6 million people on the waiting list for care in January of this year.
However, it’s not just patients who suffer when the patient experience is frustrating and difficult. Healthcare providers risk losing staff to burnout, as well as patients – one in six have reported being prepared to go private instead of waiting for public service provided care.
Often, dissatisfaction rests on one overarching complaint — getting access to care is difficult. Beneath that complaint is a litany of frustrations. For example, one of the biggest pain points cited by patients is that it can take multiple calls to schedule an appointment with the correct doctor, with appointments also not being available for weeks at a time. On top of this, online booking systems are often overly complicated and inefficient, meaning patients have to turn to calling the provider directly. With each of these frustrations, the difficulty of navigating the healthcare system takes too much patient effort to get the care they need and expect.
Providers have a treasure trove of patient interaction data to help them analyse the flow of the patient journey and identify points where too much effort is being expended. Yet, more can be done to leverage the right technology to maximise the potential of this data to ensure patients are receiving seamless and personalised care experiences.
With the right technology and data insights in hand, healthcare providers can set priorities to streamlining and transforming the patient experience across the continuum of care by reducing effort at the points of greatest impact such as, patient activation, patient access, care planning, treatment and discharge, and health monitoring.
Convenient contact is key
The first point of call to making a real difference when transforming the patient experience is having the right channels or touch points available so patients can receive support in a way that is convenient to them, whether that be phone, webchat or social media.
When an issue is urgent, patients need the ability to speak to someone without the concern of having to be put on hold for long periods of time, which can cause increased, unnecessary stress. People want to know that their issues are important when they reach out for assistance, especially when their health is involved. For many, patient experience is highly personal.
Having a range of channels available allow patients to contact healthcare providers in a way that is suited to them, allowing them to be feel comfortable when issues may be sensitive. At the same time, by giving them ability to reach out when and where an issue arises, this helps in making patients feel that their health is a priority, they feel empathetically heard.
However, while having a variety of channels available is important, a seamless experience across these is just as essential to tranforming the patient experience. An omnichannel approach designed to provide a consistent and connected experience enables healthcare providers to improve patient satisfaction and outcomes. This means that interaction data needs to be available across channels so that anytime a patient reaches out, there is an existing record of why they’ve reached out before to provide a 360 view of the patient.
Predict and prepare
Once digital channels have been implemented, interaction data collected across each one provides useful insight that can be leveraged for determining strategy and designing a roadmap for patient experience improvement. Through this, healthcare providers can pinpoint process and performance issues, and prioritise interventions with prepared solutions.
Using predictive analytic technology utilises these data-driven insights and allows healthcare providers the means to predict why a patient may reach out before they do. Central to personalising experiences, representatives can additionally use information to share relevant and timely communication with patients, and reaching out to anticipate any additional questions or concerns they might have later. For example, when a patient needs help finding a specialist, the representative should be one-step ahead providing guidance on getting pre-approval for a procedure that will likely be scheduled alongside the visit. By anticipating these future needs and meeting them proactively, the caregiver can reduce repeat calls.
The goal is for healthcare providers to get to know their patients and their preferences, anticipate their needs, and proactively offer the right service at the right time. This is vital in the healthcare space as patients want providers to show they care and that patient issues are important to them.
Investigate and identify solutions with AI
In a similar vein, key to transforming the patient experience is utilising data to identify the main pain points to reduce patient effort and having the most effective solutions readily available. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in, allowing interaction data, such as call transcripts and webchat logs, to be analysed and understood more efficiently.
Speech and text analytics driven by AI can generate transcripts annotated with sentiment analysis. And, with AI-powered topic spotting, healthcare providers can quickly identify trends in interactions related to a specific issue of interest. By understanding the root cause of why a patient is reaching out, advisors can be better prepared with meaningful solutions when patients get in touch.
Patients need to know that healthcare providers care about their problems and view them as important – and more so than other industries. This means providers need to do more to learn and adjust to demands so that patients feel heard and understood, and importantly, that they can rely on providers to take care of their healthcare needs. By staying ahead of patient needs with solutions to the most prominent experience issues identified, healthcare providers can ensure they’re meeting patient concerns with empathy and help to build trust in their services.
Putting patients at the heart of transformation
During the past two years patients’ expectations have shifted and providers need to be aware and respond accordingly. Many challenges include unprecedented waiting times for care, to shortages in vital medication and providers – there has been increased uncertainty around the reliability in healthcare services.
Moving forward providers need to change perspectives by creating experiences that put patient needs first and that those needs are a driving factor of all transformations. This means putting the right technology in place to identify the key areas for patient stress and having the solutions at hand to address this, reducing unnecessary effort and frustration.
By Adam Ackerman, Head of Health Sector Industry Strategy at Genesys