A new KLAS report shows some disconnect between patient needs and vendor offerings for patient engagement technology.
Patient engagement technologies need to do more to integrate the patient voice, working to serve the patient – not just the provider – throughout the healthcare experience, according to a recent KLAS report obtained via email.
The Patient Engagement 2020 report, which leaned on survey responses from 300 patients across the country, specifically looked at patient experiences with patient engagement technologies. This comes as the healthcare industry works to incorporate the patient as a member of the care team and recognize the growing role of consumerism in healthcare.
“In recent years, provider organizations have increased their investment in patient engagement technologies, but the outcomes they report are often provider-centric and don’t necessarily benefit patients directly,” KLAS wrote in the report’s introduction. “It is becoming increasingly important for the patient voice to be at the center of vendor development and provider deployment efforts.”
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At its best, patient engagement technology is facilitating a collaborative relationship between patients and their providers. When patients have good patient-provider communication and relationships, they are twice as likely to describe technology as useful compared to those with more “detached” relationships with their clinicians.
More specifically, patients with good relations with their providers express satisfaction with communication technology and the patient portal.
Patients with more “detached” relationships with their providers tend to prefer more autonomy in their self-management, and therefore are more apt to look for transactional patient engagement technologies. These may include online appointment scheduling, digital bill pay, and automatic prescription refills or digital refill requests.
These patients are also more likely to want future access to price transparency tools.
But these ideal conditions don’t always occur, the survey revealed. By and large, vendor and provider offerings differ from what the patient actually wants in a health technology.
For example, patients have expressed interest in understanding their own symptoms better, perhaps having the ability to triage their symptoms on their own. But there is little energy around these types of solutions on the vendor side, giving patients few options for engaging in their care in this way.
Vendors also lag behind in patient account management and price transparency tools, underscoring the industry trend in poor patient financial experience.
Where vendors are getting it right is in terms of care coordination and patient education. Both patients and vendors are placing high priority on this area, approaching what KLAS called a “state of nirvana” for patient engagement technology.
On the whole, patients and providers are both looking for a singular landing spot for patients, or a one-stop shop for patient engagement functionality. And although the patient portal offers a potential solution to this, the KLAS researchers reported that the portal is falling short of expectations.
Specifically, patients want to see a centralized app or tool on which they can communicate with their providers, digitally schedule appointments, contribute to their medical charts, pay bills, and access lab or test results.
It should be noted that many patient portals do offer these functionalities. However, patient uptake is vastly limited, and coordination of these different functions is not always intuitive.
The launch of third-party, niche vendors in this area has also complicated matters. A patient may have access to online appointment scheduling, but that tool may not be hosted on the portal. Going forward, vendors and providers may consider ways to consolidate these different tertiary engagement actions.
Respondents also expressed interest in telehealth, a technology that has thus far had limited impact on patient healthcare experiences. But telehealth has the capability to deliver on-demand healthcare, much akin to patients’ other consumer experiences. Direct-to-consumer telehealth and remote patient monitoring tools give patients the ability to access healthcare where and when they need it.
These survey results indicate a clear path forward for patient engagement technology vendors. As consumerism continues to take hold in healthcare, vendors should consider the tools that will integrate into patients’ everyday lives and assess how they can aggregate these tools into a centralized location. Tapping telehealth will also be essential for delivering on patient calls for convenient care options.
Source: PatientEngagement HIT