It’s been more than ten years since Providertech was established with the sole purpose of connecting with patients to help them better control their health. Since our early days fostering patient engagement for Phoenix-area FQHCs, our talented team has collaborated with healthcare providers both big and small to guide them in employing technology to break barriers to care.
How do we achieve this? By augmenting current strategies and optimizing existing workflows to streamline provider-patient communication.
An integral part of Providertech is Chief Clinical Officer Lisa Tejada, an RN with a master’s degree in healthcare innovation. Lisa guides our team in developing and implementing technology solutions to address the complexity of scaling patient engagement while improving operational efficiencies.
For this blog, we’ve gone straight to the source to get Lisa’s views on what’s happening in healthcare and how artificial intelligence is driving a whole new level of patient engagement. Read on for part one of our interview.
What Are Some Primary Challenges Faced by Today’s Physician Practices?
Improving and managing operations is a big piece of it. As you break that down, the overarching challenge is handling the day-to-day tasks and running a practice without having to be “in the weeds” every day. You’re responsible for managing so many facets, all of which have a great impact on revenue.
The patient experience should be paramount, but these healthcare consumers sometimes get lost in the sauce because there are so many other things to focus on, too. Let’s say a patient is calling his or her provider’s office on the lunch break and ends up waiting a long time for an answer. There is frustration building on the patient’s end because perhaps they just have a simple question or need to change an appointment. By the time they’re routed to someone, maybe that agent isn’t as pleasant or helpful because he or she is on their 50th call of the day. When you’re starting off behind the eight ball and aren’t able to answer the call promptly, it perpetuates a cycle that typically leads to a negative patient experience.
These types of things have been challenging for healthcare providers for a long time, and the staff shortages have only intensified it significantly. It’s costly to bring new employees in and train them. Call centers especially have one of the highest areas of turnover because it’s often not a satisfying job. It’s like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
How Has Healthcare Consumerism Changed the Industry?
Patients expect an experience similar to what they’ve had in other industries. However, that’s harder to achieve in healthcare for numerous reasons, from the sensitivity of patients’ health and well-being and security and compliance challenges to those ongoing staff shortages.
The stakes are much higher, though, because it’s your healthcare. It’s not just about reducing wait times but providing information about care, especially if it’s something that’s more sensitive.
We’re collaborating with a group focused on increasing sexual health screenings. Some probably aren’t being screened because they’re embarrassed to ask questions about it. Oftentimes, patients can be asymptomatic but know they should get tested because a past partner reached out to them.
According to research, common barriers to accessing sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening and testing include a lack of medical providers within rural communities, privacy and confidentiality concerns and perceived stigma from providers. Getting up the nerve to call and waiting a long time for their call to be answered are other obstacles for patients to receive STI screening. If a healthcare provider has a solution that can answer these calls 24/7 and provide multilingual support, these patients can get more information about the importance of testing and how to do it — without the embarrassment.
What Are the Biggest Shifts You’ve Seen in Healthcare Tech Over the Past Few Years?
The adoption of these different AI solutions is probably the most significant thing. We’re seeing different solutions that have artificial intelligence as the engine. When we started using text messaging to communicate with patients, that was very cutting edge at the time. Now it’s a commodity in patient communication.
AI brings a lot of advantages to physician practices, especially those limited by staff shortages. It enables them to deploy a solution to address a gap in staffing but also allows practices to examine their existing resources to identify how to use them in the most significant way. Along with lower costs from not having to onboard more staff, it promotes staff satisfaction by providing more value in patient interactions instead of answering 100 calls with the same questions day in and day out.
In my role as senior director of population health outreach for a Phoenix-based community health center, I managed a team who conducted outreach by calling patients all day long. When we started utilizing other tools like text messaging, it really changed the way we interacted with our patients. The staff loved it because they felt like they were really helping the patients who expressed interest or had questions about a certain area of care.
The more satisfied and less burned-out provider staff is in their role, the more likely they’re going to stay with the practice. Reducing the risk of turnover is profound because the challenge of stopping staff shortages at every level is not going to be resolved in our lifetime.
Stay tuned for part two of this interview. In the meantime, follow Lisa on LinkedIn and learn more about Providertech’s cutting-edge AI solutions.
