Learn More About Patient Engagement Software
What is Patient Engagement Software?
Patient engagement software facilitates communication between health care providers and the patients they serve. These solutions are designed to improve patient satisfaction and patient experience. The software provides users with a patient portal, the ability to distribute patient surveys, and handle patient intake. Solutions in the patient engagement category offer a wide array of features, which include but are not limited to: reputation management, marketing and referral capabilities, appointment reminders, patient messaging, surveys, patient education tools, and self-care management.
Hospitals or medical practices looking to boost their patient satisfaction, cut down on unnecessary readmissions, and streamline communication with patients should be using patient engagement tools. Patient engagement solutions provide communication channels compliant with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to providers and patients to boost engagement between the two parties. Patient engagement software often integrates directly with health care providers’ electronic health record (EHR).
What are the Common Features of Patient Engagement Software?
The following are some core features within patient engagement software that can help users build better patient relationships and improve patient satisfaction:
Patient portal: Patient portals allow patients to log in to see and update their health information. Implementing a patient portal can give patients a more active role in their health care. They can access their records, see past visit history, look at lab results, and more.
Patient surveys: Providers send out patient surveys to gather feedback. Direct patient feedback can give health care providers actionable steps to improve. Most solutions offer the ability to customize patient surveys, allowing providers to gather feedback relevant to their practice or hospital. Surveys can be sent automatically after a visit to ensure that every targeted patient is asked for their feedback.
Digital patient intake: Patient engagement solutions give providers the ability to handle patient intake digitally before they even step foot in the office. Patients can provide necessary information, such as health insurance information and health history. Health care providers can customize intake forms to collect all necessary information.
Secure messaging: These tools give health care providers the ability to message their patients directly while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
Other Features of Patient Engagement Software: Appointment Reminder Capabilities, Engagement Measuring Capabilities, Integration with Wearables Capabilities, IPC Systems Integration Capabilities, Online Presence Management Capabilities, Outreach / Marketing Capabilities, Patient Education Capabilities, Patient Feedback Management Capabilities, Patient Satisfaction Management Capabilities, Reputation Management Capabilities, Self Care Management Capabilities
What are the Benefits of Patient Engagement Software?
Improved patient satisfaction: Patient satisfaction is an increasingly important metric for health care providers. Patient engagement tools help solve pain points for patients and increase the ease and efficiency with which they can interact with their health care providers. These solutions phone tag and consolidate patient interactions within a single system. Features like digital patient intake and in-app follow-up improve the patient experience making them potentially stick with the provider that gave them that experience. Health care organizations can boost patient retention by improving their patients’ satisfaction.
Better quality of care: Patients can leverage patient engagement software to take a more active role in their own health, and providers can have more consistent check-ins with their patients. The increased ease of communication is particularly important in the case of patients requiring chronic care. Health care organizations can automate check-ins with these patients, sending automated appointment reminders and educational material designed to give these patients more tools to help manage their conditions.
Streamlined communication: Patient engagement solutions give health care providers HIPAA compliant ways to talk directly to their patients. This communication, depending on the system, can be via email or text, and some solutions have built-in telehealth capabilities so medical professionals can conduct fully virtual visits. Certain solutions may provide the ability to automate communications, and features like automated appointment reminders may reduce no-shows.
Who Uses Patient Engagement Software?
Administrators: Health care administrators use patient engagement software to schedule appointments, handle patient intake, and collect patient feedback. Some solutions may provide medical billing features or integrate with medical billing software, which administrators leverage to handle patient invoices and payments.
Medical professionals: Doctors, nurses, NPs, PAs, and other medical professionals use patient engagement solutions to directly message their patients. They may also use the solution to upload and share lab results or send educational material relevant to their patients. Medical professionals can use these solutions to engage with patients holistically, leveraging increased access to provide a deeper level of informed care.
Patients: Patients use these solutions to interact with their care providers, send required documentation, book appointments, and review historical health data. The goal of patient engagement software is to get patients more involved in their health care, so the solutions are designed with patient interaction in mind.
Software Related to Patient Engagement Software
Related solutions that can be used together with patient engagement software include:
Telemedicine software: Patient engagement solutions often integrate with, or include the features of, telemedicine software. The combination of these two types of software can provide a near-comprehensive solution for health care providers looking to improve patient engagement.
Patient intake software: Patient intake functionality is a common feature of patient engagement solutions, which allows patients to fill out intake forms and provide necessary previsit information digitally.
EHR software: The EHR is the backbone of any health care providers’ tech stack. It’s because of its importance and the fact that patient engagement solutions need to access and deliver health records, the latter will offer integrations with the former.
HIPAA compliant messaging software: Secure messaging, or HIPAA compliant messaging in the case of health care, is a core feature of patient engagement solutions. Communication between patient and provider must be secure, and patient engagement tools provide a secure two-way, real-time communication method.
Challenges with Patient Engagement Software
Software solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Adoption: Product adoption is key to ensuring successful implementation. If no one uses the system, there’s no point in having it. Health care providers must be diligent about educating their employees on the patient engagement solution to drive meaningful use. In addition, organizations that purchase patient engagement solutions should build the solutions’ use into their workflows to drive adoption. As patient engagement solutions are designed to boost patient interaction, it is important to educate patients on the new system. There may be robust functionality that patients either do not know or use because of a lack of knowledge. Both problems can be addressed by educating patients on the full breadth of features a patient engagement solution offers. A large part of adoption may be whether or not the solution has a mobile app.
Integrations: Proper integrations with providers’ existing health systems are necessary for patient engagement solutions to work as intended. EHR integration is the most common, but it may be valuable to ensure that the patient engagement system integrates with other parts of the tech stack. If the organization is running on a medical practice management system, the patient engagement software should integrate with it.
Compliance: Patient engagement software must be compliant with relevant health care regulations to be safe and effective. HIPAA compliance, which demands the protection of personal health information (PHI), is first and foremost among regulatory compliance in patient engagement systems.
Which Companies Should Buy Patient Engagement Software?
All health care providers interacting with patients should invest in a patient engagement solution.
Hospitals: Hospitals deal with high volumes of patients. Patient engagement systems streamline intake and communication with those patients, automating interactions wherever possible consequently reducing the staff’s burden. Automation of standard interactions, like appointment reminders, can help hospitals deal with high patient volume.
Independent practices: For independent practices, patient engagement is vital. Patient engagement solutions can help these providers build solid relationships with their patients.
Multi location practices: Building relationships and standardizing a streamlined approach to patient communication across multiple locations is much easier with patient engagement software. Multi location practices can leverage the software to drive consistent patient engagement.
How to Buy Patient Engagement Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Patient Engagement Software
During the requirement gathering process, the selection team should put together the core functionality they’re looking for. The team should have an estimate of how many users they’ll have, as well as the tech literacy of those users. Patient engagement solutions offer a wide range of features, so narrowing down what is necessary and what may be a bonus is key. The health care provider may want an omnichannel solution with a mobile app to boost adoption in heavy mobile device users. Integration with existing systems should be considered at this point.
Compare Patient Engagement Software Products
Create a long list
Prospective buyers should put together a list of vendors that meet their core requirements to form their long list. They should start with a comprehensive list of features they’re looking for, from must-haves to wish list functionality.
Create a short list
At this point, prospective buyers should send out RFIs and use the responses to narrow their long list down to a short list of viable solutions. The selection team should conduct in-depth research at this point and start to form informed opinions on the available options.
Conduct demos
At this point, the prospective buyer will demo products from the short list. During the demo stage, the buyer should ask questions about specific scenarios common to their practice or hospital. Certain solutions may be geared towards a specific type of practice, and have features for that practice type. Initial pricing conversions should take place if they haven’t already, or if the vendor’s pricing isn’t clearly outlined.
Selection of Patient Engagement Software
Choose a selection team
Administrators, medical professionals, and systems administrators should all be involved in the selection process. Administrators and medical professionals, the users of the software, should have a say in choosing the solution that they’ll spend the most time using. Systems administrators, or tech support professionals involved in the implementation and integration of the software into the existing tech stack, should also be involved.
Negotiation
The selection team will have to negotiate with the vendor, weighing the price against the potential benefit of purchasing and implementing the solution.
