Implementing patient engagement technologies can help healthcare providers to ensure efficiencies, expand abilities, and extend boundaries of care.
FREMONT, CA: Implementing patient engagement technologies can help healthcare systems offer better clinical and business outcomes for the care provider organizations. But to deploy these technologies effectively, business leaders need to put together patient-centric systems and processes and stress on change management before, during, and after technology implementation. Here are some tips and best practices to unleash the goodness of patient engagement tools to the fullest.
Adopting Guiding Principles
The foremost thing a healthcare provider should do when implementing patient engagement technology is to adopt a set of guiding principles rooted in the needs of the patients. Patients today do not just receive healthcare, but they experience it. So, healthcare organizations need to realize that patient health needs are diverse and can include short-term and long-term requirements. Understanding patient requirements and preferences would help care providers drive greater adoption and engagement throughout a patient’s health journey.
Chasing Away Organizational Anxiety
The implementation of patient-facing engagement technologies always creates a unique level of organizational anxiety. Care providers should be prepared for it. Communication between providers and staff is a critical factor in chasing away this type of organizational concern. It also calls for a need to have a clear, shared understanding of how patient data travels in the organization and how this information is disseminated at the operational level and among the care provider community.
Defining Objectives
Defining goals and improving the front-end patient experience are usually top priority considerations for care providers. Healthcare organizations should also focus on reducing patient wait times and using a text-first approach, conduct a baseline assessment, and take a deep-dive into staff utilization to increase the yield of implementing patient engagement technologies. As patients today shop around for the best care experience, they expect everything at their fingertips. That means healthcare facilities must also provide a digital front door for patients to access care services at any time.
Bringing in Change Management
Another best practice to influence the implementation of patient engagement technology is bringing in change management. In change management, healthcare providers must prioritize interoperability with existing technologies to ensure success, structure opportunities for continuous improvement, solicit feedback from patients, keep a pulse on input from clinicians, and monitor and track the technology implementation to ensure success.
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