Remove Friction From The Patient Experience Through Proactive Healthcare Communications
When it comes to enhancing patient experience, healthcare providers must overcome many challenges, including multiple role players, strict regulations and complex processes. One way to improve patient experience is to remove friction from the patient-provider relationship, by proactively providing information that is relevant and useful at each point of the patient journey.
When dealing with a health issue, there are many events in the patient journey that are more than a little stressful. Having a healthcare communications management strategy that provides clear, concise, and relevant information can assist in reducing anxiety at various key touchpoints.
Achieve an improved patient experience by providing patients with relevant information at different points in their journey, for example:
- Pre diagnosis: patients need information that will help them find the right healthcare provider that is suited to their personal needs and aligned with their healthcare plan
- Post diagnosis: patients need help understanding the next steps, booking appointments, and getting health insurance approvals
- During treatment: a step-by-step treatment program is required, written in plain language and with links to more information will go a long way to easing patient anxiety
- Post-treatment: one of the most stressful events post-treatment is understanding the fees charged and paying the bill
The goal of a comprehensive patient communication plan is to answer the patient’s questions before they ask, thus shortening the period in which they feel uninformed or out of control. This has benefits for the provider as well – if a patient is aware of key information – such as what they are likely to be billed prior to starting treatment, they are less likely to pay late or query the bill.
In addition to reducing stress, communication around issues such as selecting the right healthcare provider, getting the right plan approvals, knowing how bills must be paid and what they are liable for, results in a more informed patient and less friction in the entire patient journey.
Well designed patient statements reduce friction in the billing and payment journey
As mentioned, one of most stressful aspects of the patient experience is understanding the bill. Having to wade through reams of information, contractual terms and supporting documentation to understand their financial obligations adds further weight into an already stressful experience.
On the other hand, providing a well-designed summary statement enables patients to quickly understand their financial liability and drill down into the detail should they want to. To further enhance the patient experience, the summary statement should be provided to the patient based on their preference, which could be via print and mail, a digital channel or both.
Being able to view their statement with clear and concise information, on a secure online portal at anytime, removes a lot of friction in the patient experience. It is also likely to improve the time-to-pay.
Doxim’s CCM platform improves patient experience by enhancing healthcare communications
Doxim offers a simple and compliant patient statement solution that enables healthcare providers to deliver a modern patient experience, as part of a comprehensive customer communication management solution. A patient statement solution improves time to payment, while allowing patients to enjoy the benefits of receiving their statements securely online.
Doxim’s CCM platform provides tools and resources to manage all patient communications across disparate systems and teams. It also enables consistent messaging across the different channels including print, email, SMS, and the Web.
With the right technology partner, you can get your patient documents online quickly and securely and start building happier patient relationships as soon as possible.
