Q&A: What You REALLY Need to Know about Patient Engagement Platforms

Patients who are engaged are often more active in their healthcare, which can lead to better health outcomes and overall satisfaction levels. And as patients come to expect more and more from their healthcare providers, the importance of proactive engagement couldn’t be greater.

Thankfully, due to advances in technology, such engagement no longer relies on endless hours of phone calls and tedious paper trails. But such technological advancements don’t come without their share of risks. After all, hacking is more rampant than ever, and HIPAA fines for non-compliance can be steep.  

This is precisely why incorporating a patient engagement platform into your practice’s overarching operations just makes smart business sense.

What Is a Patient Engagement Platform?

A patient engagement platform is communication software that gives patients, healthcare providers, and medical staff the ability to share information securely via computers, and in some instances, even apps on tablets and smartphones.

Patient engagement platforms can:

• Automate many of the processes needed to connect with patients
• Reduce time-consuming tasks that traditionally needed to be done manually
• Create cost-saving efficiencies across your practice

More specifically, they can:

• Send appointment reminders
• Help streamline access to medical records
• Enable self-scheduling
• Deliver patient education

What Should You Look for in a Patient Engagement Platform?

When evaluating your options, make sure that the patient engagement platform you select includes the following:

• EHR/EMR Integration – Manual data entry is time-consuming and often results in human error. Seamless integration with EHR and EMR will ensure patient data is accurate across the board.
• Sentiment Analysis – One of the primary goals of patient engagement is to understand your patients on a deeper level. By leveraging sentiment analysis technology, it will be easier to monitor satisfaction levels and other performance metrics. And when you are aware of your patients’ needs, you can respond more appropriately and in a timelier manner.
• Interactive and Real-Time Patient Communication – Secure 2-way communication, and more specifically, text-based messaging, is a must. Many patients prefer texting with their healthcare providers since it’s both fast and easy. In fact, people read text messages within three minutes of receiving them, which makes this a significantly more efficient way to contact your patients.
• Patient On-Boarding – An effective patient engagement platform should include patient on-boarding capabilities such as access to your patient portal and secure electronic forms. This will save time for your patients, as well as your staff. It will also lend itself to better data integrity since patients will no longer be scrawling their information on paper forms that your staff then needs to attempt to interpret and enter into your EHR.

What Are the Benefits of a Patient Engagement Platform?

A patient engagement platform offers various benefits, ranging from improved patient communications to increased profitability. Here are some of our favorites:

• It Simplifies Patient Communication – Just as patients are at the heart of every healthcare practice, they are also front and center when it comes to patient engagement platforms. A customized patient engagement platform helps boost patient communication by facilitating:
  
  
  • Appointment scheduling
  • Appointment reminders
  • Prescription reminders

A software package like Curogram includes HIPAA-compliant 2-way text messaging, which gives your patients the ability to respond to messages from your office via the convenience of their cell phones.

• It Improves the Patient Experience – Improved communication lowers pre-appointment stress and anxiety, and ease of simplicity makes it easier for patients to be more proactive in how they manage their health. What’s more, enhanced patient communication can encourage greater compliance with treatment, and aid in early illness diagnosis.
• It Lends Itself to Better Operational Efficiencies – With a proper patient engagement platform in place, patients can fill out patient intake and consent forms, as well as electronically scan their insurance cards, from a variety of different devices. This not only saves your staff time, but it also safeguards your patients from annoyingly long wait times.
• It Empowers Healthcare Providers to Make More Informed Decisions – By using a patient engagement platform, you will be able to collect information like the number of online appointments scheduled, satisfaction scores, and return of investment data so that you can make more informed decisions related to staffing, as well as identify opportunities for improvement.

Partner with Curogram for Your Patient Engagement Platform Needs

Curogram's easy-to-use, HIPAA-compliant patient engagement software will help you better communicate with your patients – safely – while simultaneously improving engagement.

If you’re looking to:

• Reduce phone calls by up to 50%
• Reduce no-show’s by up to 75%
• Improve your reputation

… and increase revenue by up to 80%, isn’t it time you schedule a demo to learn more about what 45,000+ clinics have already incorporated into their practices?