Transcription:

Prakash Chandran (Host): Chris Becker is a Project Specialist at MetaStar where he supports practices and providers participating in the Quality Payment Program, Small Underserved and Rural Support Program as well as the Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Program. Let’s talk about electronic patient engagement with Mr. Chris Becker.

This is MetaStar Health IT Radio, the podcast from MetaStar. I’m Prakash Chandran. So, Chris, let’s start with the basics. What is Patient Engagement?

Chris Becker CPHIMS, CPHIT (Guest): Yeah, thanks Prakash. Patient Engagement involves encouraging patients to participate in their own care to help improve health outcomes, drive better patient care and ultimately achieve lower costs. It combines a patient’s knowledge, skills, ability and willingness to manage their own care with communications designed to promote positive behaviors. Patients really want to be engaged in their healthcare decision making processes and those who are engaged in their care tend to be healthier.

Host: So, you mentioned that those who tend to be involved in their care are healthier but are there other reasons why patient engagement is so important?

Chris: Yeah. Member and patient engagement play a key role in achieving the triple aim in goals identified for the institute for healthcare improvement and those goals are to improve the patient experience of care with regard to both quality and satisfaction, they improve the health of the populations as a whole and also work to reduce the cost of care. The voice of the patient and movement to place the patient at the center of healthcare has become an increasingly important focus among healthcare organizations. Healthcare is moving toward a model where engaging with patients as consumers is the first step toward improving patient education, activism and empowerment. And just for fun, here’s some statistics.

Patients with chronic conditions and multiple comorbidities are on the rise. The estimate is that by 2020, there will be 157 million with at least one chronic illness. Also by 2020, there will be 81 million folks with multiple chronic illnesses and most of these patients see at least four different physicians a year. So, those are some I guess staggering numbers in my mind.

Host: Yeah, totally staggering. That’s incredible. You mentioned that or how you start to engage the patient, I imagine technology plays a pretty big role. Can you talk maybe a little bit about how it’s used to increase the patient engagement?

Chris: Sure. First of all, having that right technology and the right services in place are keys to successful patient engagement. Patient portals can enhance patient provider communication and enable patients to be able to check test results, refill prescriptions, review their medical record and view educational materials. The patient portals can also streamline administrative tasks from the organizational side such as patient registration, scheduling appointments, and pushing out patient reminders. They allow practices to generate electronic statements and facilitate online payments. In addition, a patient portal, some patient portals can support live operator automated messaging which can foster better patient retention and loyalty especially in the face of increasing competition these days.

Together, the technology and patient communication services can help satisfy patients who demand that convenient 24/7 access to their health information. And then again, on the organizational side, can increase revenue with more efficient self-pay collections and incentive payments for meeting promoting interoperability stage three requirements.

Ideally, orgs should look for a patient portal solution that can be seamlessly connected to their HER, billing and practice management systems. So, those are kind of advantages of technology.

Host: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And everything is online these days so, I think more and more patients are having that expectation. But you mentioned the ROI for organizations. I oftentimes understand how difficult it is to exact internal change so, what do you recommend for driving successful patient electronic engagement internally?

Chris: Yeah. Great, great question. You want to create that overall culture of engagement. Getting practice wide support amongst the employees is critical for successful patient engagement. And it doesn’t really have to be hard. When your practice’s leadership, staff, providers and patients have been involved in creating the patient engagement vision; they are more likely to be enthusiastic about implementing it. So, rely on policies and procedures in moving forward with your patient engagement to ensure consistency. Be prepared with and communicate the benefits of patient engagement for patients, staff and providers. To make sure that all staff are on board with patient engagement, make it clear that all staff are valued and critical to successful patient engagement, explain why this engagement is important to the practice. It’s an opportunity to improve care delivery and the patient experience, again, increased revenue, see more patients and take on new tasks and responsibilities and some of those old workflows go away.

Make sure the staff are comfortable with tasks they will have to complete. Make a clear enforceable policy around completing those tasks. But also add some fun to the process with rewards and recognition for the employees. And then ultimately, address any concerns that technology will replace the employees. Help them understand how this patient engagement will decrease monotonous tasks so they can focus on more important work as they move forward.

Host: Yeah, I really like that last point and really getting them involved and having them look at this as a tool to help them do their jobs better and focus on the important stuff. So, I want to shift over to the patient side. How do you motivate patients especially different ages, or different demographics to engage with this electronic patient engagement tool?

Chris: Right, right. First and foremost, make the information readily available on the patient portal or whatever electronic medium you are using there so they are not confused and having to search really hard when they are in there. And personalize that experience for them. Possibly some examples of some good things to do are to provide personalized check in’s between appointments. Just if you can do that, heh, how you doing? Anything we can do for you? Any questions? Things along those lines.

And then maybe offer some condition specific ideas for managing chronic conditions such as diabetes, push out some little educational materials for them to view. They can open that and look at that at their own leisure. And possibly remind patients to take meds as directed and follow their treatment plan. Just little nudges there to engage in healthy behavior. Make it easy for these patients to ask questions and connect to their healthcare team. Don’t put a lot of barriers in the way there.

Encourage patients to schedule wellness visits or annual physicals. Flu season, have them send a reminder to come and get your flu shot or other preventative screenings as appropriate. And then also, just push out some healthy living tips such as recipes and exercise routines. Just little things like that go a long way. Just in general, increase the convenience of the portal. Make it something that they want to look at, that they want to log into and take a look at.

Host: Yeah and that they derive value from. I really like that. It sounds like a perfect world when both the organization and the patients are adopting this. But from your experience in the field, what are some of the barriers you’ve seen to achieving electronic patient engagement?

Chris: Yeah. There’s definitely some of that out there. Back to the previous question, make it easy to use because patients are unlike to use a product that isn’t simple and easy to use, if they have to jump through a lot of hoops or it’s pretty complicated. They are simply not going to do it especially when you get into an elderly population. Patient health literacy is also an integral part to improving patient portal adoption. If you are not making it at the level of the patient, if it’s over their head so to speak; they are just – they are going to struggle with it, and they are not going to derive any value from that.

So, be aware of the needs of your population or where that literacy lies there. Another barrier is a lot of providers don’t promote their patient portals. They’ll have it but they are just not engaged or again, in a previous question, the employees aren’t motivated to push the portal if you will or support it or promote it. So, that’s important. Make sure your folks are doing that internally. And then be aware of cultural barriers too. Be aware of your population. If you have a high Hispanic population let’s say and everything is in English, that may not fly so well. They are going to quickly not use that or come to that conclusion that is just isn’t for them if you are not meeting their needs culturally and language wise.

So, those are probably the biggest barriers.

Host: Yeah, that’s all really good advice. So, in wrapping up, I just love to learn a little bit more about what the future looks like with regard to patient’s engaging electronically.

Chris: Yeah, I think it’s really promising. In the years ahead, experts expect portals will move beyond the limited functionality that they have today and hopefully transform into user-friendly technology the puts a patient’s whole health history into one easy to navigate online portal. You are going to see highly personalized portals that aggregate data from multiple sources that can contextualize the data, run analytics on it and can empower patients as they navigate their health journey.

Technology vendors will increasingly optimize portals for mobile device use. Studies show people overwhelmingly use Smart Phones and tablets to access this information online and then they will also offer more resources including connections to support groups or communities focused on their specific health conditions or wellness concerns. So, it will become kind of the 360 degree view of the patient’s health history, and hopefully drive those external connections that patients will find helpful.

Host: All right Chris. Well I really appreciate your time today. that’s Chris Becker, a Project Specialist at MetaStar. Thanks for checking out this episode of MetaStar Health IT Radio. For more information on this topic and to access the resources mentioned, please visit www.metastar.com/podcast. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social media channels. That would really help us out. And be sure to check out the entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. Thanks and we’ll see you next time.