How the pandemic drove health systems to adopt digital tools to enhance the patient experience

The pandemic drove healthcare organizations to finally offer what patients have been requesting for years: an improved digital experience.

As healthcare providers return to something akin to pre-pandemic normal, patients not only are looking to keep telehealth and the portals used during the pandemic in place; they also want a seamless experience similar to what they get as consumers in every other aspect of their lives.

During a May 27 Experian Health-sponsored virtual roundtable as part of the Becker's Hospital Review 11th Annual Meeting, Experian's Victoria Dames, senior director of product management, identity suite, and Sanju Pratap, vice president, consumer products, led a discussion on the importance of a seamless digital healthcare experience for patients.

Four insights:

  1. Patients expect their experiences as digital consumers to be available in healthcare. Consumers are using applications and online portals for everything they do in life, from ordering food to making travel arrangements to banking. They also expect digital experiences to be available throughout healthcare — from registration and scheduling all the way through payment.

  2. Digital healthcare can help providers better service their patients. Beyond the clinical data usually captured in healthcare systems, information such as social determinants of health, medication adherence, access to transportation, housing stability and even technical savviness can help improve the quality of care and communications. "What if we take all of this and utilize it to know how well we can know our patients and take that to fuel our digital journey?" Ms. Dames asked.

  3. Patients want a seamless and convenient healthcare experience. Although healthcare organizations have many back-end systems handling various aspects of a patient's visit, patients want one seamless, holistic experience. While they want self-scheduling, self-registration, the ability to fill out paperwork online and digital communication options, they won't visit multiple digital systems to complete those tasks. "They want convenience. They want us to know a lot about them so we can coordinate that care across the continuum seamlessly," Ms. Pratap said of patient expectations.

  4. The pandemic will continue to drive digital adoption. Healthcare providers rapidly shifted to telehealth in 2020, and patients quickly adapted. This drive to digital care is expected to continue, especially with 71 percent of providers anticipating that patients won't be ready to come back to in-person waiting rooms in the near future. Additionally, over the course of the pandemic, patients have grown comfortable with telehealth and using solutions such as online portals. The comfort among patients with digital technologies is likely to push healthcare deeper into offering both digital self-administration activities and telehealth. "We have the tools out there, and the patients are ready for it," Ms. Pratap said.

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