Electronic Health Reporter

By Chris Evanguelidi, director, enterprise healthcare Market, Redpoint Global

The growing healthcare consumerism trend has empowered millions of patients and healthcare consumers to take more control over their individual healthcare journeys, in and out of the doctor’s office. Healthcare is no longer viewed as strictly a relationship between a patient and a doctor, but as a collection of disparate experiences all geared toward improving outcomes.

Wearables, telehealth, patient portals and other digital-first touchpoints all contribute to an expectation among patients for a consistent experience centered around their ongoing care and well-being. To meet the expectation for a personalized experience, healthcare providers are prioritizing the development of an understanding of their patients outside of a clinical setting.

A recent Dynata survey, conducted in collaboration with Redpoint Global, explored consumer perceptions about their healthcare experiences. The research revealed that more than half of consumers surveyed (57%) said that how well a healthcare provider understands them as a patient and creates a personalized experience was one of the most important considerations when choosing a healthcare provider. In addition, poor patient experience and a lack of personalization and patient understanding was cited by survey respondents as the top reasons patients consider switching healthcare providers (as well as healthcare plans).

Engage with Consistent Relevance

What does it mean, though, to develop a personal understanding of a patient? An electronic health record (EHR) – a modern version of the traditional chart – often lacks important data that reveals a contextual understanding of what makes a patient unique. And by having this data, providers are then able to engage a patient with a relevant experience across the healthcare journey. Data such as social determinants of health (SDOH), medication adherence, risk tolerance, diet and exercise programs and data from wearables are important attributes that reveal patient behaviors and preferences that form a personal understanding.

Possessing this detailed knowledge of behaviors and preferences also aligns with the value-based care approach to healthcare. In parallel with the rise in healthcare consumerism, a value-based care model that ties financial compensation to improved outcomes makes it even more important for providers to compile a single patient view.

One key challenge for providers in compiling a single patient view that is then used to deliver a personalized omnichannel experience is siloed data and processes. A single provider network or healthcare organization, for example, often has multiple EHRs that don’t share data. In addition, because PII data and PHI data also typically live in separate systems, it is extremely difficult for healthcare organizations to deliver hyper-relevant communications.

Consider, for example, a marketing organization tasked with closing care gaps and segmenting out only basic patient data – name, age, address, etc. They might send an email to men over 50 urging them to schedule a preventive screening. With a single patient view, however, the same marketing team might improve outcomes considerably by matching the recipient to a preferred provider, recommending optimal times, offering transportation options to someone without access to transportation or leveraging other social determinants. By delivering the right message at the right time and on the right channel, the preferred outcome – a scheduled appointment/closed care gap – has a higher chance of success.

Close the Experience Gap

By knowing all that is knowable about a patient through a single patient view, an organization can leverage advanced segmentation rules based on everything that makes a patient unique – current health condition, social determinants of health, etc. – to allow for efficient and effective personalized messages and communications to key segments, returning the most value for a provider group or health plan. Particularly in a VBC healthcare model, there is a direct revenue link between hyper-personalized content through advanced segmentation and improving health outcomes.

The Dynata survey shows a pronounced gap between the type of experience healthcare consumers expect to receive from their provider and the experience delivered. More than 90 percent of patients said that it is either “important” or “very important” to receive relevant communications from their provider and healthcare plan that accurately reflect an understanding of their healthcare journey, yet just 50% say they are very satisfied with the relevance of the communication they receive.

A single view of the patient is the key to closing the experience gap, finally delivering patients and healthcare consumers the personalized omnichannel experiences that improve outcomes and lead to happier, healthier patients.