This blog is part of a three-part series. Please check out the two previous blogs: Modern Healthcare Marketing: 5 Ways Virtual Assistants Enhance Patient Experience Before the Appointment and Patient Experience Continuity: How to Avoid Dropping the Ball Across Digital Channels.
Healthcare is ever-evolving with influences from policy, economic circumstances, scientific advancements and technological innovation. More options for care exist than ever before with many benefitting from healthcare development and better treatment options. However, despite a world where everyone is a patient, the care experience remains unsatisfactory.
Conversation Analysis: Doctor-Patient Interaction and Medical Communication
Compared to the modern conveniences of most other services in our lives, the healthcare experience feels archaic. These healthcare communication deficits aren’t just frustrating and inconvenient; they have a widespread impact on health outcomes.
43% of patients reported communication challenges negatively impacting their health.
Dissatisfaction with the patient experience puts healthcare organizations’ operational and revenue sustainability at risk with patient leakage, low referral conversions and low care engagement. With the healthcare market offering new, convenient options for patients, these threats to health systems only become more apparent. One way administrators are looking to reduce these threats is to improve the patient experience to align with the modern customer experiences provided in other areas of their lives.
A Conversational Messaging Approach for Better Patient Experiences
Artera’s patient communication platform equips organizations to elevate their patient engagement practices and provide a better patient experience. Supported by Intelligent Analytics, a robust Marketplace of Vendor Integrations and an easy-to-use Staff Console, Artera creates meaningful communication touchpoints for patients.
At Sansum Clinic,
95%
of Conversation Builder conversations with
which patients engaged
were addressed without staff intervention.
93% of patients text, and 98% of text messages
are opened within 3 minutes.
To ensure patients get the right message at the right time, Artera integrates with your EHR to pull in relevant patient information to coordinate what messages they receive. All communications are completely customizable and configured on-demand on the platform with extensive reporting available for additional optimization and better outcomes. Artera’s Conversation Manager and Conversation Builder work together to deliver personalized communication to patients through their preferred communication channel.
Artera’s Conversation Builder utilizes multi-step decision trees to handle complex patient inquiries, bringing in a live staff member if needed to close any gaps for patients.
Equipped with Natural Language Understanding (NLU), the platform can interpret multiple patient responses, creating conversational interactions for patients over SMS and avoiding scripted, robotic interactions. Texting through Artera about your care feels like texting a family member and offers more convenience for patients and staff, no matter where you are in your care journey.
79% of patients want their healthcare provider to improve their healthcare experience by enabling them to initiate conversations via text on any topic.
Customers using Conversation Builder have customized workflows to help new pediatric patients schedule, follow up on patient cancellations or no-shows and help patients more easily access telehealth services. These types of touchpoints wouldn’t be possible with manual outreach over the phone or through low-engagement surveys; instead, Artera facilitates these conversations with patients how they prefer, leading to better engagement and meaningful communication.
Leverage Pre-Built Conversations for Faster Results
Conversations can be built in Artera with a high degree of customization to handle a range of patient communication needs. For routine communication needs, building conversations can feel repetitive or arduous, but they often reach the largest volume of patients.
To reach more patients faster, Conversation Templates are available to handle common communication use cases. Pre-built with leading practices, Conversation Templates allow organizations to rapidly deploy automated conversations relevant across the entire patient journey. All Artera customers can access and customize conversation templates for a more seamless patient experience.
For more targeted patient experience improvement, patient communication Conversation Packs provide additional templates to tailor communication improvements for specific points of the patient journey. Because the patient journey is nonlinear and every organization has different goals, patient communication Conversation Packs reflect this with flexible implementation options so you can target communication improvement more strategically.
Conversation Packs ensure consistent, timely touchpoints for patients throughout their care experience, meaning more satisfied patients and better outcomes. Regardless of how you implement patient communication Conversation Packs, you can expect to see a better communication experience than with other solutions that don’t consider the entire patient journey.
Enabled by the Artera Platform, Conversation Packs support a unified patient communications strategy for a better staff and patient experience.
Prioritizing a Better, Modern Patient Experience
As patients move through their care journey, from acquisition and onboarding to ongoing care, to their financial experience, there should be consistent, reliable communication touchpoints. Better engagement with patients means better care plan adherence, outcomes and, of course, patient satisfaction.
While the patient experience has not always been a priority for healthcare administrators, current research and a greater understanding of holistic care experiences are setting a new standard. The importance of a positive patient experience – as well as the consequences of a poor patient experience – is becoming more apparent, and roles such as Chief Experience Officers are becoming more prevalent, emphasizing the importance of a patient experience strategy and the need for executive representation.
Today, we know that challenges to an exceptional patient experience are often rooted in disjointed experiences, confusing or inconsistent communication around care and impersonal, ineffective interactions that reduce trust. The worst part? These types of challenges often persist due to competing priorities and resource constraints. This means organizations continue to use ineffective, time-consuming processes that rely on antiquated tools and tech.
66% of healthcare consumers report dissatisfaction due to incomplete communication experiences.
In the digital age, many patient experience leaders are looking to technology for innovative solutions. Across the market, dozens of solutions promise to address pain points felt by staff and patients with more modern engagement tools. Yet, many of these solutions fail to tackle the root issues and promise to automate existing workflows without considering optimization opportunities.
With Artera, you can overcome these challenges by learning to optimize outreach for a better experience at every point in the patient journey. As a leader in patient communication, we’ve worked alongside customers to understand what barriers exist to effective patient engagement and where patient communication breaks down – enabling us to develop a more modern, strategic path for health systems to provide a greater patient experience overall.
Learn more about Artera’s Conversation Packs, here.
