Organizations widen virtual offerings in response to pandemic
Patients already wanted an improved experience in healthcare, and the need to meet their needs during the lockdown accelerated changes.
Patients are consumers, and they increasingly expect healthcare providers to meet their needs. At the same time, providers are learning to quickly adapt to these new expectations, often finding that they line up with improvements in service delivery.
These and other lessons were among the findings in Wednesday’s edition of the HDM KLASroom, which covered changing workflows and meeting patients where they are.
The massive impact and change required by the massive COVID-19 pandemic amplified the need to make quick changes in service delivery, noted Adam Cherrington, an research director for KLAS Research. The move to virtual care delivery, through the use of telemedicine and other telehealth services, is one example of a service that soared during the lockdown phase of the pandemic, he noted.
Recent research by KLAS also shows significant consumer appetite for capabilities such as self-scheduling, remote check-ins and other patient-facing services.
In response, more healthcare organizations are taking steps to respond to consumers’ preferences. KLAS is tracking their efforts to create a “digital front door” that faces the community. “There are still a wide variety of terms that people use here,” Cherrington said. “While there’s wide agreement that this will be a priority, and they’re just trying to figure out what it is.”
Being responsive to consumers can take a variety of forms. For BayCare Health System, it can be as simple as teaming up with Publix, a large grocery store chain, on a program called Meds to Beds, which enabled Publix’s pharmacy division to deliver medications to patients who are about to be discharged.
The initiative is seen as a service by patients, enables Publix to build connections to patients with ongoing medication needs, and increases compliance with medication compliance for BayCare, said Edward Rafalski, its chief strategy and marketing officer. Compliance is important because post-hospitalization drug regimens are important to avoiding readmissions, and the Bed to Meds program increases compliance to nearly 70 percent.
BayCare also is using an Alexa-based system, augmented by technology from Aiva Health, a virtual health assistant vendor that enables patients to use voice commands to request services, control their room environment or alert staff to care needs. The use of voice enables patients to stay in their beds and activate changes such as changing room temperatures or lowering blinds, and this increases patient safety, said Craig Anderson, director of innovation at BayCare.
In response to the COVID pandemic, BayCare also implemented a symptom checking chatbot solution that it co-created with Clearstep. The asynchronous, AI-infused chatbot can drive patients along and bring them to the right point of care, Anderson said. Also, in response to the pandemic, BayCare began a program to provide hospital care at home for appropriate patients with low-level disease states, thus providing more capacity within facilities for patients needing more intensive care.
“The concept of innovation is not the technology,” Anderson said. “It’s doing it different to please the patient and give them a better experience. In some cases, it’s getting them what they want when they need it and bringing it to their homes.”
“We should be learning from other industries; technology is enabling that redesign, and adoption is happening much more quickly,” Rafalski concluded. “We need to ask what can we do to make the customer experience better? We’ve designed our product around the doctor, as opposed to the patient. We’re not near changing that yet, but the pandemic has forced us to reach a tipping point. The pandemic made us realize that we can do it.”
A recording of the session can be accessed here.