A health IT adoption boom is inevitable; it’s up to payer and provider executives to drive patient trust in technology and push engagement.
As health technology continues to see a COVID-19-era boom, it will be incumbent upon healthcare providers and payers to drum up consumer buy-in and spark true consumer engagement, according to a new report from Accenture.
“The intersection between digital technology and healthcare experiences has certainly accelerated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and leading the future of care will demand rethinking core assumptions about the intersection of people and technology,” Kaveh Safavi, MD, JD, a senior managing director in Accenture’s Health practice, said in a statement. “People’s perceptions of and relationships with technology are changing, and to adapt, healthcare payers and providers need to redesign digital experiences.”
When it comes to consumer health IT use, that will mean connecting the dots between how much patients trust health IT and the inevitability that will be a mainstay in healthcare as much as everyday life.
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Of note, 70 percent of healthcare consumers don’t trust that their data is secure with digital technology, the report authors said, citing internal survey statistics. That has been seen anecdotally throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as pitches to tie contact tracing efforts to people’s smartphones were met with great concern.
But the fact of the matter is, technology has long been becoming pervasive, and most experts agree COVID-19 has cemented that. A whopping 85 percent of the 259 payer and provider executives also included in the report’s survey agreed that technology has become inextricably linked to the human experience.
After all, people are becoming more dependent on chatbots to conduct risk assessments, or robots to do deliveries, or technologies that can clean cities, all in an effort to help society hunker down and quell the spread of the novel coronavirus.
To that end, the medical industry needs to intervene to bridge the gap in consumer trust in technology and the promise of technological innovation.
Industry leaders and stakeholders alike are getting there — 45 percent of the executives surveyed agreed rapid tech advancement has the potential to seriously disrupt the healthcare industry and 70 percent of patients acknowledge their relationship with tech is only slated to grow.
Now, it is time for industry collaboration to truly prime both the innovations ahead and the consumers who will use them for that boom.
“Organizations—especially those in technology leadership roles—must elevate the technology agenda within their organizations to help people to feel safer about using technology tools,” the report authors wrote. “Healthcare payers and providers can take action during this time of change to win back the trust and consumer confidence that has eroded.”
Central to that will be transparency around the entire technology experience, the researchers said. Although patients still want a personalized healthcare and IT experience, they have grown weary of how tools are able to provide that. How did they get the information that makes healthcare personalized?
“People still want the many benefits of customization, but they are skeptical of the non-transparent methods that organizations use to deliver it,” the researchers said. “They want more ownership of their data and of the experience itself.”
“Healthcare organizations can help turn these formerly passive audiences into active participants by transforming one-way experiences into true collaborations,” the researchers added. “Doing this well is a way to differentiate in a market where virtual is becoming more mainstream.”
It would behoove healthcare organizations to leverage the data this is already accessible to them, the report suggested. Patient-generated health data (PGHD) from remote patient monitoring tools and wearables have the ability to predict patient preferences in ways seen in other service sectors, like the airline industry.
“People want these types of experiences,” the researchers emphasized. “Patients—especially those with multiple comorbidities—want tools such as apps that can guide them through their care journey.”
That said, organizations need to establish trust among patients. Again, the report noted that 70 percent of patients are concerned about data privacy in the burgeoning digital age.
Foremost, organizations need to allow patients to choose their own digital health experience, and that includes choosing the extent to which patients may share their medical information.
But beyond that, organizations need to be explicit in their own prioritization of data privacy. This is what will motivate patients to opt into these digital health journeys.
“It will be critical to adopt a data privacy mindset and convert it into a set of capabilities. For instance, creating a granular profile and preferences page where users can select what they are willing to share or not, and decide how much tailoring they want,” the report authors recommended. “Organizations can build trust with their users by offering more transparency about data collection and other important topics like pricing.”
The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has proven that health IT and innovation are not going away; if anything, these digital tools are becoming increasingly vital to supporting the healthcare workforce, engaging patients, and sustaining the old normal way of life where possible.
To that end, it will be equally important for organizations to win over the hearts and minds of the patient consumer base as it is for the industry to invest in innovation.
“COVID-19 has not slowed digital technology innovation; rather, it’s amplifying it to historic levels,” Safavi concluded. “Given the current environment, healthcare organizations must elevate their technology agenda to explore emerging digital technologies that provide the right infrastructure to help people feel safer about using technology tools for their healthcare experience.”
Source: Patient Engagementhit