The healthcare industry is facing the challenge of meeting the rising expectations of patients who desire easy, seamless, and connected interactions with their healthcare providers.
To achieve this, healthcare providers have adopted various digital technologies to offer patients more choices in engagement and communication. However, the implementation of these “point solutions” often leads to unintended consequences such as disconnected channels, data silos, and incoherent communication, resulting in a fragmented patient experience.
Talkdesk Research™ partnered with CHIME Digital Health Analytics to conduct a quantitative survey of health system executives, focusing on the obstacles hindering the unification of patient experiences in healthcare. The survey highlights the importance of integrated patient engagement solutions and the implementation of an end-to-end patient engagement strategy. However, healthcare leaders face challenges such as fragmented ownership of patient experience and existing enterprise architecture, which impede their ability to create connected and personalized patient experiences. Although healthcare leaders recognize the significance of unifying patient experiences, they lack confidence in executing the consolidation of various point solutions within their current organizational environment.
Fragmented patient experiences have significant implications, affecting both patients and staff. Patients can encounter different experiences when transitioning across tools, resources, and specialists, leading to frustration and starting from scratch. Inconsistent patient experiences create challenges for healthcare organizations. Integrating patient engagement capabilities is seen as a high priority by 55% of healthcare leaders to address these challenges.
To overcome these issues, healthcare organizations must coordinate interactions and integrate technologies to unify patient experiences. Consolidating patient engagement systems on a single platform, integrated with electronic health records (EHRs) and offering real-time digital interactions or AI-enabled support, can improve patient support and reduce the strain on staff. However, providers must address the limitations of current systems, including data collection and management, while ensuring a positive patient experience.
Consolidating patient engagement technology is a multi-step journey that requires overcoming organizational and IT barriers. It involves shifting the perspective to a holistic approach and understanding the patient journey as a unified experience. Stakeholders may have concerns about the potential loss of functionality during the transformation process, but consolidation is necessary to meet patient expectations.
Building an end-to-end patient engagement strategy requires a deep understanding of cloud-based patient experience capabilities, stakeholder buy-in, and scalable solutions. While the consolidation of patient engagement software presents challenges, there are pathways to develop a strong patient engagement strategy and implement scalable technology to deliver a seamless and adaptable patient experience.