The healthcare landscape is evolving.

As the need for transparency is increasing, so is the involvement of patients in the healthcare processes. 

No matter how advanced healthcare technology becomes, patient engagement is always going to be a critical aspect of healthcare’s revenue cycle management. Amidst the advancement and in the race to provide premium quality care and treatment, healthcare service providers often overlook the aspect of the ones they are taking care of of-patient engagement. 

Patient Engagement is..

An aspect of healthcare management, patient engagement benefits the clinicians, providers, and patients. It is a way of ensuring better communication between the patients and the healthcare service providers to empower patients into being more active in their care and treatment and giving hospital opportunities to deliver better quality treatment. 

An Engaged Patient Would be..

A patient will be called engaged when they:

• Understand the health-related concerns
• Up to some extent can control their care by following a proper routine
• Participate in the decision making regarding their treatment
• Ask questions concerning their health and the ongoing treatment
• Have the power to access their health-related information
• Keep track of their habits and symptoms

Patient Engagement affects the Practice’s Success and RCM

If a healthcare practice is not being open about its processes, especially why and how much is the patient paying for the services being rendered to them, patients don’t think twice before moving onto a better facility. They expect better outcomes, and patient engagement is one way to do it. 

With the Affordable Care Act and Medicare implementing remarkable changes, the healthcare industry is strongly emphasizing on and working towards ensuring high patient engagement. From admitting a high number of patients, the focus has shifted to ensuring quality care and treatment. 

• Engagement programs help improve patient to doctor communication and enhances transparency, which helps strengthen the facility’s reputation alongside promoting a culture of self-care amongst the patients. 
• Satisfied patients will further recommend practices and physicians to more patients, helping the facility and the medical practitioner earn a good reputation. 
• Giving patients the power to access and use online portals will relieve your in-house staff from mundane tasks, thereby enhancing their overall efficiency. 
• The time thus saved can be better utilized by the staff in dedicating more time to the patients and focusing on delivering quality care and treatment. The regular check-ups and follow-ups will boost your bottom line, thereby increasing the overall revenue. 
• With the patient’s actively involved in their healthcare through online portals, the satisfaction rate for both the patients and physicians has significantly increased over the years. This strengthens the practice’s success. 
• Hospitals actively following and implementing effective patient engagement strategies have received better overall rating when compared to those who did not. 
• Hospitals successfully engaging patients have observed a remarkable reduction in the no show rate. This further has a domino effect on revenue cycle management, which gets disrupted. 
• The patient’s satisfaction metrics results reflect on the overall collection, which increases exceptionally. With the automated payment plans, self-service and registration, text alerts, making healthcare more of a personalized experience, physicians are benefitting with the increased patient’s collection.  

Effective Patient Engagement Tips

• ENHANCE ONLINE PORTALS:

Patients need a nudge to get actively involved in their healthcare, and an application is just the right and more interesting way to encourage them. Implementing technology in creating portals or applications with designs that enrich user’s experience will ignite the interest in them to use it for a healthier lifestyle. 

• DESIGN THINKING:

Iterating design thinking will help you better understand the patients and will thus deliver desirable outcomes for both the patient and the physicians. 

• AUTOMATION:

Create effective healthcare solutions by implementing machine learning and artificial intelligence. Take, for instance, the devices that monitor your blood pressure, heart rate, footsteps, etc., or the ones that periodically send you a notification reminding you to achieve your regular target. 

• COMMUNICATION PLATFORM:

It is not uncommon for patients to find themselves confused with the treatment or medications they are on, and neither is the unavailability of the hospital staff to promptly tend to them, considering the burden they are in. Developing a communication platform can help. An accessible and secure platform that answers any and every healthcare-related question will increase patient engagement.

While the definition for an ideally engaged patient is still a topic of debate considering patient engagement holds a different meaning for different people, technological advancement is undoubtedly helping set a goal for the same.