We had the opportunity to discuss the value impact of CX-focused tools in healthcare with Marcus Garcia, the Regional VP of healthcare at NICE. Marcus’ insights led us into the intricacies of patient-provider interactions and the need for AI-led automation that does not leave out human intuition and touch in NICE CXone.

Achieving PX is a Subtle Balancing Act!

Patient experience (PX) is a relatively new dimension in healthcare, driven by rising patient expectations. Marcus explains, “Patients now expect the same ease, convenience, consistency, and transparency they experience when booking a flight or ordering a product.” While digital interactions are becoming the norm in patient-provider communication, optimizing voice interactions remains critical.

“Patients also expect a seamless experience across digital, contact center, and mobile touchpoints, even though these systems are often managed separately,” Marcus adds. This complexity creates a need for a cohesive digital interaction strategy that balances automated and personal interactions to meet patient expectations.

“For tasks like booking, rescheduling, or canceling appointments, patients want fast and easy communication options,” Marcus continues. However, when the issue is more complex, patients often prefer speaking with a human agent to have a detailed conversation. “By automating repetitive tasks like appointment scheduling, contact centers can save valuable time, allowing agents to focus on meaningful, personalized interactions with patients,” he concludes.

CXone Mpower, NICE’s flagship platform, ensures all patient interactions, whether through voice, digital messaging, chatbots or live agents, are integrated in a single unified and scalable platform. When all interactions are handled from a single place, there is no need to manage multiple tools or platforms, there are no more silos between front and back office operations so customer queries move seamlessly across departments, and the system is continuously self-optimized – learning from past interactions to fine-tune future ones with maximum effectiveness and efficiency. CXone Mpower empowers healthcare organizations to deliver personalized self-service experiences, orchestrate human and AI agents in one place with bi-directional learning, and enhance the day-to-day performance of contact center.

CXone is built on the vision of helping hospitals and healthcare providers elevate patient centricity by transforming the way healthcare services are delivered.

In summary, CXone Mpower automates straightforward, repetitive patient interactions and enhances those requiring human involvement. This approach significantly improves patient engagement and experience, reduces friction, improves agent satisfaction, and ultimately leads to better patient outcomes.

Platforms Built for Positive Healthcare Outcomes

CXone is built on the vision of helping hospitals and healthcare providers elevate patient centricity by transforming the way healthcare services are delivered. By leveraging technologies and understanding the role of stakeholder challenges, NICE helps augment experiences that translate to positive healthcare outcomes through its platforms. Marcus helped us delve into each of these facets:

1. Self-Service Tools: In today’s digital-first world, consumers expect the convenience of managing various aspects of their lives through their personal devices. This includes making or rescheduling appointments and accessing test results at their convenience. The strategic use of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can significantly reduce administrative burdens and streamline processes both before and after care. This involves offering self-service options for routine tasks such as scheduling and managing appointments, requesting referrals, refilling prescriptions, reviewing bills, and making payments. Studies suggest that 30 to 50% of interactions involve simple queries about scheduling, rescheduling, or canceling appointments—tasks that can be easily automated. By deflecting these to self-service, healthcare providers can focus on more complex interactions without the need for additional staff.
2. Proactive Customer Care: NICE’s proactive outbound AI communication engages patients early, automating their journey while addressing potential issues before they escalate into larger problems. Rather than reacting to patient calls or emails, our tools take the initiative to start conversations, anticipate questions, resolve concerns, and ensure patients enjoy a smooth and seamless experience throughout their care journey.
3. Analytics and AI: Leveraging insights from phone calls and digital interactions across all touchpoints is invaluable for any organization. It enables providers to apply analytics to understand the entire patient journey and identify areas for improvement. Combining this with post-care survey data provides a clearer picture. A comprehensive understanding of the patient journey requires a unified solution to measure and analyze customer experience and feedback data. This holistic approach helps identify opportunities for automation and self-service, further enhancing the patient experience.
4. Augmenting the Agent Experience: The agent experience is central to the patient experience. As routine tasks become automated, the skillset required for agents will evolve, emphasizing human intuition and empathy. We provide tools to augment agents’ capabilities, including real-time guidance, insights, and instant access to up-to-date knowledge articles, ensuring they always provide accurate and effective answers. Our tools also automate interaction summaries, allowing key points to be documented quickly and accurately, enabling agents to move seamlessly to the next interaction. With these tools, agents can assist patients efficiently without placing them on hold or transferring them. These insights are continuously refined as the system learns from prior interactions, driving ongoing improvements in agent efficiency and effectiveness.

One Medical’s AI and Human-led Experiences

To explain how NICE’s CXone platform addresses the challenges faced by most primary care providers, Marcus recounted One Medical, which bought the CXone platform. The customer aimed to improve the workforce, quality, performance, and after-call feedback management.

CXone tracked their inbound call volumes and call intervals. Using an IVR system, they observed trends and challenges in patient interactions. By leveraging interaction analytics, they were able to unlock insights to make their contact center services available 24/7 with the current staff and to expand their business. One Medical plans to expand with CXone and enable NICE’s GenAI capabilities with Copilot, Autopilot, and AutoSummary, all under a unified platform.

HOMELINK’s Efficient, Error-free Patient and Provider Experience

“There’s also another case study with HOMELINK. They were exploring ways to improve efficiencies to serve their customers better. They adopted NICE’s AI-driven proactive customer engagement technology,” Marcus adds. It helped their patients stay on top of their health plans with a multi-channel outreach campaign including text, calls, and email between patients and care providers for seamless communication. Previously, it involved many manual touch points with a high scope for errors, leading to no-shows and failure to follow up on patient appointments.

NICE’s proactive journey automation allowed HOMELINK to listen, identify, and start conversations while understanding when to bring in a human agent and update the data/feedback back to the systems. This resulted in improvement in efficiency and productivity for their patient engagements. “Nearly 9 in 10 users reported being able to report their updates in real time. HOMELINK also recorded a 30% increase in productivity per hour per employee,” Marcus shares.

Paving the Way Forward with PX

NICE’s platforms’ success is attributable to underlying technologies such as cloud, advanced analytics, digital tools, and AI. “It is a balancing act. NICE’s cutting-edge tools are also well-aligned with providers’ needs and recent regulatory standards.”

Behind NICE’s new product launch and product enhancement lies the company’s R&D teams’ effort, where they invested nearly $346 million and hold more than 529 patents. It proves NICE’s strong foundation in IP for leading breakthroughs across AI-driven healthcare tools, patient-centric workflows, and secure and compliant digital engagements.

Marcus also spoke about NICE’s most awaited developments in 2025, which include the latest enhancements to the AI-driven features for proactive patient outreach with reminder notifications. NICE’s strategic partnership with EPIC helps deliver seamless workflows and a centralized view of patient interactions to providers. This will help achieve the company’s goal of pushing the boundaries of what healthcare organizations can do to enhance patient experiences and outcomes.

The post NICE: Putting Patients and Providers at the Heart of Care appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

Hearing those words can be a blessing or thrust you into panic mode, and with the changes in our world over the last three years, leaders are hearing them more and more. One of the most spotlighted areas in the work unit has been finding, attracting, and retaining top talent. Once you find top talent, how can you ensure a lasting employee-employer relationship? The answers come in many forms, such as compensation, schedules, education, but I believe the main driver is leadership engagement.   

Engagement starts with genuine interest and communication. Ask your team how they prefer to regularly connect with you, then implement an agreed-upon structure. Whether it is weekly one on one, monthly staff meetings, video calls, or all of the above, scheduling touch bases starts to build the foundation of commitment. With remote meetings now being the norm, it is more important than ever to be present and focused when meeting with employees, and even though you may have a lot of “things” to do, recognize that a large part of leadership is taking time with employees, and having a pulse on their work and work environment. I’m not talking about micromanaging or knowing their duties in detail; I’m talking about understanding their perspectives. Keep in mind, as employees learn from you, you can also learn from them. When this dynamic is formed, it fosters strength, cohesiveness, and effective performance, which ultimately leads to longer tenure.

When employees are heard, acknowledged, respected, and allowed to be a part of the solution, the brand, customer service, reputation, internal dynamics, financial performance all flourish, as does the leader.

It is our obligation as leaders to recognize the temperature of our teams; is engagement thriving or is disengagement creeping in? With this in mind, we know fires and last-minute deadlines come up constantly for leaders, so rescheduling connection time may be necessary, but do not make a habit of this. When leaders continually reschedule, postpone, or are late for employee meetings, or worse, appear preoccupied, or disengaged, this eventually will result in employee apathy and mistrust. You can gain valuable intel and strengthen transparency by showing up, asking questions about general well-being, professional barriers and opportunities, and career aspirations. Building action plans to address obstacles and prospects, along with follow-through, leads to accountability and credibility. I cannot stress enough that taking time to interact with your team and creating a culture of communication and transparency will help you excel at your role, create a trusted workforce, and enhance organizational performance.

There is no doubt involved employees can be your greatest asset to positively influence co-workers and help foster an engaged work unit, so it is as important to focus on engaged employees as it is on the disengaged. When we pay less attention to the outstanding workers, we risk creating apathy and potentially losing valuable team members. Disengaged behaviors need to be addressed expeditiously, so make sure to use your human resource partners to move the process along. Discovering the root cause of employee detachment is imperative to turn around unwanted conduct or poor team dynamics, and whether there are one or several teammates involved, taking the time to meet individually, as well as in a team setting may be beneficial. Clearly, if you are responsible for many staff, it is unrealistic to meet with every person, but developing expectations across your team, work unit, and organization about the importance of employee engagement, is the best way to ensure a consistent approach across all leadership levels. In turn, this tactic will continue to enhance how employees view the leadership team.

When diving into disengagement, listen and carefully understand the issue(s). For example, if employees are struggling in their roles, partner on a plan to provide support, training, or if warranted, design a performance improvement plan. If the disinterest comes from being unhappy working for the organization, find out the reasons why and try to work toward a solution, but if that doesn’t work, you may have to help them move on. If management, you or another, is contributing to the divide, engage human resources, the appropriate chain of command, and discuss candidly. Leadership must keep an open mind and carefully assess each situation, because the disengaged employees may not be the root cause, their behaviors may be the result of something bigger; it could even be you.

It is not difficult to understand that engagement is a big part of a high-functioning operation, and it starts with leadership. When employees are heard, acknowledged, respected, and allowed to be a part of the solution, the brand, customer service, reputation, internal dynamics, financial performance all flourish, as does the leader. 

The post “I Quit” Leadership and the Workforce, Engagement Leads to Retention appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

By Danny Bartlett, Director of Radiology, Pershing Health System

Healthcare providers worldwide have relied on body mass index (BMI) to help predict general health outcomes in patients. We have all heard that BMI is an old way to calculate body mass and the results that come with the number associated. BMI is calculated by using two variables, height and weight. These two variables don’t truly quantify a patient’s health and mortality risk. Since 2013, two-thirds of Americans have been overweight, defined by the BMI calculation.

Many universities and hospitals around the world, like Yeugnam University Medical Center Division of Nephrology and Harvard’s Department of Nutrition, saw the issue of relying on BMI. These two institutions finally found a different correlation by using lean body mass and fat mass to determine the mortality risk in patients. Both institutions used body composition analysis through bone densitometry to make a more accurate correlation.  

These research studies showed that patients with low lean muscle, high-fat mass, and high visceral adipose tissue have a higher risk of diabetes, kidney failure, and may have fattier livers. BMI doesn’t differentiate between bone mass, lean muscle mass, body fat, and visceral adipose tissue. Body composition analysis provides these parameters with additional measurements as well.

What other measurements does body composition analysis have?

There are many ways to acquire a patient’s body composition. These methods span from electrical impedance analysis, which utilizes a weak electric current that flows through your body, to hydrostatic weighing, which only measures body fat percentage. Bone Densitometry can look at more in-depth measurements and ratios that these other alternatives don’t have. One of the most important measurements is the visceral adipose tissue (VAT) measurement. Visceral adipose tissue is fat that surrounds organs within your abdominal cavity. A high VAT number correlates with a higher risk of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and high cholesterol. The android/gynoid ratio is another integral measurement that bone densitometry can provide is the android/gynoid ratio. Android fat is distributed through the body’s trunk, while the gynoid is fat that accumulates around the hips and buttocks region. People with higher android fat have a higher chance of heart disease and diabetes. By calculating how much fat you have through your trunk (android) and dividing it by the fat distribution around the hips and buttocks, we can create the android/gynoid ratio. If this ratio is more significant than one, it can present more health risks for patients.

Is Body Composition Analysis through Bone Densitometry safe for patients?

Yes, even though body composition analysis utilizes radiation, patients’ radiation is very low. Therefore, a round-trip flight across the United States can give you more background radiation.  

Depending on state regulations, state radiation control programs may also be involved to ensure that programs meet low radiation standards by incorporating specific time frames between each exam.  

What other features does this scanner have?

Bone densitometry’s primary function in a hospital is to help screen for osteoporosis in patients who may suspect a decrease in bone mineralization. Most hospital programs that promote women’s health utilize bone densitometry and mammography as their yearly screening tools. Another feature that bone densitometry may have is a single energy femur exam, which can help diagnose atypical fractures, and vertebral fracture assessment, which can help detect fractures or deformities in the thoracic and lumbar spine. These other features will give patients a more well-rounded experience with different ways to diagnose various diseases.

When it comes time for your next bone density scanner or incorporating your first, adding the additional software for body composition will be worth it because of the quick return on investment.

Can my facility afford this revolutionary piece of equipment?

Universities have had this technology for numerous years to study changes in the human body. Health and wellness centers have also utilized this equipment to help monitor fat loss and muscle gains.  

We are now seeing the beginning phases of smaller hospitals incorporating body composition analysis through bone densitometry because of the utilization of the osteoporosis screening feature. Small hospitals attempt to make a one-stop experience for women’s health by incorporating mammography and bone densitometry. In addition, smaller hospitals are upgrading their bone density scanners with additional software to analyze body composition.  

When it comes time for your next bone density scanner or incorporating your first, adding the additional software for body composition will be worth it because of the quick return on investment.

How will patients get referrals for this exam?

Most of your patients will self-refer depending on state regulations. Patients that come in are typically health-conscious or starting a new health journey. Body composition analysis is a great spot to start when modifying a healthy lifestyle. Tracking progression and regression on fat loss and muscle gaining can help decide what path to go. Dieticians and personal trainers love a starting point that can quantify results. 

Patients have seen the scale stay in the same spot and become discouraged when they’re making positive results. The reasoning is that patients may gain muscle and lose fat proportionally, which willoffset fat-loss results. With body composition analysis, we can see where the muscle is growing and decreasing fat.

The post It’s Time to Get Rid of the BMI Standard appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

At NYU Langone Health, we perform over 100,000 elective surgeries annually across our system. Nationwide, approximately 1 million total joint replacements (TJR), 5,000 of which we perform, are conducted annually. While patients today are spending significantly less time in the hospital after TJR surgery to recover, they also have less direct contact and instruction from their care teams. Operating surgeons and care teams also face the challenge of managing patients when a significant portion of patient instruction, evaluation and rehabilitation are delivered by health professionals often not associated with the surgeon or hospital where the procedures take place (i.e., home care). Because of this, increased communication, coordination and engagement are needed throughout the patient’s orthopedic care journey.

In NYU Langone’s IT department, our goal is to be the global leader in the digital transformation of care delivery, research, and medical education driven by innovation and integration of information and technology. With this in mind, we knew that we needed to utilize our strong foundation of digital tools to address the challenges our orthopedic patients and surgeons were facing, decrease the cost, and utilize the time that patients and caregivers spend undergoing TJR more efficiently and effectively.

Unfortunately, we discovered that we were only accomplishing part of that goal for our orthopedic patients. While they were receiving comprehensive education and instruction ahead of their surgery, they had limited touchpoints throughout the rest of their time with us. We also discovered that post-surgical instructions varied among different doctors in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, resulting in inconsistent experiences.

To address with a patient-centric approach, our IT team partnered closely with our Orthopedics, Operations, and Communications teams to develop an integrated and holistic approach to our patients’ procedural experience. Our first focus was standardizing the pre-surgery education process, to ensure all orthopedic patients received adequate preparation and instruction for their surgeries. Rather than simply translating our surgeons’ written prep instructions into a digital format, we used our digital capabilities to rework the content in a way that best resonated with patients. We developed a care plan for total joint replacement that included pre-surgery content and videos on topics like blood clot prevention, the role of physical rehabilitation, and fasting protocols. This content was developed with subject matter experts and physician leadership in our Department of Orthopedic Surgery, to increase touchpoints and engagement before surgery.

When developing digital programs, we do not improve one at the expense of the other, but rather, we design both to complement each other.

Videos introduced patients to their surgeon to help ensure they felt supported and to reinforce the importance of adhering to their care plan. Of note is that we developed a thoughtful communications strategy to ensure that patients were receiving these materials throughout the entire care journey, and at the appropriate times, to avoid information overload prior to surgery. These videos were delivered to patients through the NYU Langone Health app and they were asked to watch them as part of their care plan. Because of our ‘One Patient, One Chart’ principle, all providers across our system, from care coordinators to nurses, physician assistants, and the surgeons themselves, could see what materials were assigned and completed by their patients.

While we aimed to improve the surgical experience for patients, we also had to ensure that our clinicians’ experience wasn’t compromised. When developing digital programs, we do not improve one at the expense of the other, but rather, we design both to complement each other. To do this, we created department-specific order-sets to ensure that all clinicians within the Department of Orthopedic Surgery were following the same surgical checklist with all patients and providing a consistent experience across the system. We also transformed the pre-admission testing (PAT) process by standardizing the pre-surgical requirements and utilizing virtual visits for PAT, to save both patients’ and clinicians’ time during the pre-procedure process.

Once the patient’s surgery was completed, providing follow-up education and monitoring clinical milestones were critically important to a successful recovery. We created a series of post-surgery content, which included a six-week home exercise protocol with video and written instructions. We also delivered recurring symptom management questionnaires to assess bowel function in the first few days after surgery, monitor the incision site, and track pain scores over time.

The results of the Procedural Patient Experience implementation spoke for themselves. Among our Orthopedic Surgery patients, 75% reported that they were extremely satisfied with the educational videos provided to them through the NYU Langone Health app. 85% of those same patients also reported feeling moderately or extremely prepared for their surgeries because of the videos. All patients surveyed said that the NYU Langone Health app helped them feel more connected to their care team.

By listening to our patients and understanding their needs throughout the experience, we were able to use technology to improve their quality of care, as well as their digital journey throughout our organization. Collaboration with the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and its leadership was critical to the success of our program, and we could not have achieved what we did without their support. We have already seen the benefits that the Patient Procedural Experience has had on our orthopedic patients and we plan on continuing to roll it out department-wide to create a more seamless surgical experience for all patients and clinicians.

The post Procedural Patient Experience: Leveraging Robust Digital Platform to Improve Patient Digital Experience appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

It’s not the patient’s portal
It’s your digital front door. 

The patient portal is a reflection of your organization’s strategy on patient engagement.

This shift in thinking tripled my organization’s patient portal use in less than one year.

Patient portals were first used in the late nineties by a few large healthcare organizations but took off with the meaningful use criteria of CMS’s EHR incentive program. The incentives included in the program jump-started the adoption of EHRs by independent practices and hospital systems. The program required thresholds for the use of basic functionality. This included messaging, visit summaries, and access to laboratory results. Providers rushed to meet these goals to receive the incentives, but very few could increase user adoption numbers.

Most organizations treat the list of portal features mandated by MU as a to-do list. If an organization hits each item, they consider the portal “done” and move on to other things.

The common reasons patients were not engaging the patient portal would not shock the average person.

1. Websites were clunky and difficult to navigate; and
2. Portals lacked basic functionality.

Since the nineties, web design has come a long way. Now, most portals are much easier to navigate and include mobile apps. The second reason, lack of functionality, however, should make you rethink how to view your organization’s patient portal.

Most organizations treat the list of portal features mandated by MU as a to-do list. If an organization hits each item, they consider the portal “done” and move on to other things. Despite this “done” mentality, EHR vendors continue to add functionality to their portals that customers can (and should) adopt. For example, the platforms can support scheduling everything from visits to procedures. Patient-generated data from wearables can be entered and viewed by a patient care team. Because the portal is considered finished, however, organizations are slow to or do not adopt these new functionality. If healthcare providers saw their patients more like consumers, a shift would take place in functionality and improve user adoption and satisfaction. 

Friction, in the consumer sense, identifies how hard it is for a customer to get what they want from a digital interface. Why does Amazon have a “1-click to buy” button on their app? It makes it much easier for me to impulse buy toys for my kids. If I had to click through four screens and re-enter my password each time, I might abandon my purchase and invest my money wisely. 

Organizations that remove unnecessary friction will do better. This became clear to our organization over a year’s worth of patient portal steering committee meetings. We had a dedicated patient advocates and IT representatives meeting monthly to discuss our portal because we were stuck at around 12% activation and use. Repeatedly, the group made recommendations to offer canceled appointment slots to a waitlist of patients and online self-scheduling of office visits, but the operational engagement was not there.

The reasons made sense but mainly revolved around changes in our practices’ long-established workflows that were mainly telephone-based. It was only after getting buy-in on the concept of patients-as-consumers did the operational areas come on board. Unsurprisingly our portal numbers are now over 40%.

Patients, like consumers, have come to expect interactions with your system to be on their devices and for those interactions to be easy. These may seem lofty goals, but a few key pieces of functionality will help you get there.

1. Registering for an account: Many organizations require an initial patient visit before a patient may access the patient portal. A registration code and instructions are given to the patient after the initial visit with the organization. Unfortunately, this makes the portal an afterthought. Most portals allow a patient to create an account prior to a visit. Organizations should take advantage of this functionality to do pre-visit planning, paperwork, and communication. Yes, patients may make mistakes when entering demographics or insurance information. They may even create duplicate records if they forgot they have an account, but these mistakes can be fixed on the back end. Getting patients in your digital front door is worth the hassle.

2. Scheduling office visits: Giving patients the freedom to schedule their appointments is almost sacrilegious to the medical community. Physicians and office staff want to retain control over the flow of patients into the office. This is 100% understandable and has merit. Leaving gaps for emergencies or preventing a patient from jamming a 1-hour annual physical into a 15-minute sick visit prevents havoc from being wreaked on the flow of an office.  The reality is that very few of these fears come true with some careful planning and system monitoring.

3. Access to medical records: Viewing test results is a long-standing feature that most organizations adopted due to MU. The federal government pushed this feature to a new level with information blocking rules that went into place this year. It used to be commonplace to block test result release for days or even weeks. Now, delaying test results is considered information blocking. The new rules include office and hospital notes and all of this data needs to be available to patients in almost real-time.
   
   Just because this functionality is on, however, doesn’t mean it is promoted. Trusting patients to see their medical records and understand it feels like a giant leap to most health care organizations. Our organization shares over 35,000 notes a month. Patients viewed roughly 15% of them with no complaints to our patient advocacy department. In fact, we received multiple compliments on how helpful patient data was to patients and families. There is a growing body of medical literature to support this. Check out Opennotes.org to learn more.

4. Make your app a one-stop-shop: App development is an area that most hospital systems do not think that much about. They take their portal as their vendor created it. Think about using it for Wayfinding within your facilities. Give your patients educational material that comes from a trusted source. A health system near us did just this. They created an app and embedded several different apps, including their patient portal. The end result is a seamless experience for the patient and their families.

Patient engagement is shifting towards seeing patients as consumers. Offer them a friction-free portal experience and they will use it to their benefit and yours.

The post The Journey of Patient Portal is Often Incomplete appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

The digital front door is opening wide and fast, and the patients are knocking. But as technology continues to expand to our fingertips, have you ever wondered if our health IT solutions are landing with our customers as designed? What does the patient portal experience look like? This is a question that has stuck out to UConn Health, so we’ve set out to gain a better understanding from those who can answer it best – the patients. 

The patient portal is a really great opportunity for our caregivers and our patients to try out new technology and have another option to connect with their care team.

The secure patient portal is available for UConn patients to access their care, video visits, view test results, letters, message their providers, see upcoming appointments, pay bills, and complete medical questionnaires.

In the last quarter of 2020, UConn Health created a patient portal experience workgroup and welcomed patients from diverse backgrounds (diverse in age, technology experience, and primary languages, to name a few) to experience technology first hand before full deployment. We created a space to welcome direct feedback and allow patients to test functionality in our non-production environment before releasing it to the public. 

The patients share real-life experiences, which helps us understand the real-world challenges of navigating personal devices and sheds light on different technology literacy levels. We meet on a monthly basis to ask their opinions, learn the ease of use of new features, and find anywhere someone may get hung up. We ask the patients to go through a workflow without guidance so that we can highlight areas of opportunity for improvement. 

One of the quick wins we’ve been able to incorporate was expanding the character limit of patient messages. Such suggested change was brought forth by a patient who experienced an ability to type longer messages at another organization and wanted to see consistency across platforms. Our steering committee was in agreement and we were able to accommodate the request very rapidly.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been able to bring forth new scheduling features for both testing and vaccines, and tested the features with the patient experience workgroup before going live. We conducted an interactive self-scheduling workflow where the workgroup members used their test accounts to act as patients and follow the process of self-scheduling. Patients thought the self-scheduling process was well done and the workflow was easy to follow. We implemented the change the following week and made it available to the public.

We’ve received excellent feedback from our patients, both from the workgroup, and through our patient experience office, that the portal has rapidly improved. In the last year, we’ve seen a 25% increase in our activation rate. The patient portal is a really great opportunity for our caregivers and our patients to try out new technology and have another option to connect with their care team.

We know that health care outcomes improve when patients are engaged, and we know that when patients use an online portal, their engagement increases. Having more patients enroll and take part in different technologies and capabilities through the portal will ultimately improve our patients’ health and wellbeing – and that’s putting our patients first.

The post The Heartbeat of Healthcare – Patient Feedback to Improve the Portal appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

Some years ago, I took a position as service excellence department leader at a large community hospital struggling with its patient experience scores. The leadership team had recently purchased an electronic rounding tool for the nurses to capture patient feedback on hospital-issued iPads. I’d not previously used anything but paper and pencil, so I had to quickly get up to speed on how it worked and how we were to use it before we went live.

Patient rounds were being designed to capture complaints and concerns, track the actions we were taking to remedy them, and include a focused set of yes/no questions on our lowest-scoring areas on the patient experience survey. By asking patients if it was quiet at night, if their doctor explained things in a way, they could understand, or if their nurse had been in every hour to check on them, we could get a better handle on where we needed to focus our attention. We were sure that a precise focus and streamlined issue resolution would surely lead to better scores.

The thought of capturing these issues and generating reports electronically instead of manually was incredibly appealing. Results could easily be tracked, the progress of issue resolution could be color-coded red, yellow, or green, and we could compare the real-time feedback with our survey scores. We were ready to dive in.

When it came time to introduce the tool to the staff, we gave out a bunch of iPads, showed the bedside nurses where to click and how to escalate an issue to leadership, and expected them to love it as much as we did. We imagined our scores would soar.

They didn’t. Patient experience decreased and staff morale plummeted.

Rather than scrap the whole project, we wanted to find out where we went wrong. Here’s what we learned before we went back and relaunched:

Always involve the end-user in the planning process.

We had so much faith in this company’s product. We didn’t think to ask the bedside nurses what ideas they had for improvement or a smooth implementation. We assumed that since the company had such impressive client testimonials and results with this tool, they’d thought of everything and our team would love it just as it was. We were wrong.

Allow the end-user to use their critical thinking skills.

When you give professionals a script to follow with no latitude to change it to suit the unique circumstances of the individual patient, you create resentment in the staff and mistrust in the patient. Patients want genuine, sincere interaction with a person, not simply to answer a set of questions that they don’t feel relevant to them. It defeats the whole purpose of improving the patient experience if they think everyone is merely reciting what they’ve been told to say. Trust your staff to capture the intent behind the question and ask it in a way that feels natural.

Offer an abundance of training opportunities and practice before you go live.

The time to learn is not when you’re in the middle of patient care. Users should feel very comfortable with the new tool, know some initial troubleshooting, and who to call for help. By doing some practice runs ahead of time, you increase the chances of a smooth implementation and reduce the anxiety many of them will feel while using a new tool.

If there’s a new piece of technology, explain it to the patients.

Patients lying in a hospital bed are afraid. They’re afraid of dying, of getting an infection, of getting the wrong medication, of being ignored; they’re even afraid of a lot of the equipment. If we’re going to be bringing in a shiny new object, even as something as common as an iPad, we must tell the patients what it is and why we’re using it. They need to know we’re not ignoring them. We may be looking down and typing, but it’s because we’re capturing what they’re telling us so we can make things better for them.

Always, always explain the why behind the what to the staff.

This might be the most important one. It’s not enough to have a cool new shiny thing. Unless the staff understands why they’re being asked to change the way they do things, they’re not going to be excited about changing. Change is hard, but when they know why it’s important and what we hope to gain by making the change, they’ll be much more likely to get behind it.

When introducing any new technology to medical professionals, it’s easy to forget some or all of these steps. We, as executives, can often get so excited about the new thing, we forget to slow down and lay the crucial groundwork that’s essential for a successful launch. Patients should be at the center of the why with staff at the center of the how.

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Over seven years ago, a group of leaders at Penn Medicine met to discuss building  a new patient pavilion on our healthcare campus in West Philadelphia. The vision was both innovative and comprehensive, with an emphasis on creating  a hospital of the future by modernizing the patient stay and their experience with the healthcare services.. The idea revolved around designing a new digital patient care facility to change the way care i delivered, and  included a robust technology plan to facilitate this effort. The sheer energy around the initiative was palpable. It was exciting to think about especially because our health system began with constructing the nation’s first hospital and first medical school. So this new facility would be an extension of this rich history and serve the community for generations to come.

Fast forward to today – the building is now less than 200 days from being patient ready. The work done over the last several years is nothing less than impressive. The collaboration of the team working together from design and concept to construction and outfitting this 1.5 million square foot building is world-class. This building will serve as the centerpiece of the West Philadelphia campus, integrating both inpatient care and advanced outpatient care.

As one can imagine, the technology footprint in a building of this scale is significant. The building is designed to provide a seamless digital experience for the patient and their families as well as the care providers. This includes comprehensive wifi coverage – both a guest wifi network for patient families and guests as well as secure wifi for patient care activities. Comprehensive wireless capability for cell phone coverage is included from all major carriers throughout the pavilion. An intelligent self-balancing antenna system carries traffic for cellular, private radio, and legacy paging devices across a single 5G capable infrastructure for future-proofing. Overhead paging and traditional auditory alerts are minimized by aggregating notifications from nurse calls, physiologic monitoring, and rapid response requests and touting them to an integrated smartphone application. This has been architected to minimize “alert fatigue” among the clinical staff. 

The building isdesigned with full resilience around all services, including critical IT connectivity requirements. End-user devices as well as individual patient rooms and operating rooms, are connected to one of two parallel network infrastructures by predetermined and well-documented criteria so that the impact of any outage, planned or unplanned, is clearly defined and minimized.  Extra network cabling capacity is built into every patient room and operating room so that new technologies within an anticipated six-year window will not require clinical or business operation impact to accommodate. Furthermore, modular patient room cabling standardizes the placement and jack numbering and documentation of every device, reducing any future troubleshooting.

The patient room is designed around patient engagement and digital capabilities to enhance their stay at Penn Medicine. In addition to the medical technology that outfits the over 500 single-occupancy patient rooms, it all starts with what we call the patient footwall. The footwall is a 75-inch television that is integrated as the centerpiece of  the room to make it easier for the patient, their family and visitors to interact with the hospital and the patient care team.

This large screen television can be used for entertainment, with a full array of channels and on-demand content for the patients and visitors. The large screen television is also fully integrated with Penn Medicine’s electronic medical record system to enable its use for patient care purposes, eliminating dry-erase boards, door flags, and other manually updated means of communication that easily become outdated. The television is also capable of delivering patient education content and helping to identify the patient care team as well as local weather and other essential information.

The patient room technology is further integrated to connect right quthin reach of the patient’s fingertips. . The patient can control the room itself from the bedside, either through a pillow speaker remote control or via a tablet device. These devices can be used to change the temperature, raise and lower the light and/or shades, and order food from the cafeteria menu. These remotes can also be used to communicate with the patient care team as well as fully control the footwall television. Each room is equipped with specialty glass that the patient or family member can engage from within the room to provide privacy. Additionally, outside of the patient room, a display is installed for additional patient care purposes to indicate if the patient is a fall risk or designate if they require isolation.

The technology also allows the patient to identify staff members as they enter the room, which is a big patient satisfier to improve their experience significantly. Some “rollback” technologies are integrated that will come into play when patients leave their room or are discharged. These controls are environmentally friendly and result in energy savings with both lighting and air handling.

One common theme with this new pavilion and the campus itself is connectivity. The need to have a patient care facility like this with advanced connectivity is evident. However, when you think about extending that connectivity beyond just IT and creating a seamless patient experience across the campus with transitions of care, you are now talking about the game-changing improvements in patient engagement and patient care.

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Like many health care organizations across the country, we have found nothing like a pandemic to force us to expedite process changes and our use of technology. The use of Microsoft Teams, online scheduling, telehealth visits, iPads for communication, and MyChart messaging are just a few of the measures that were either rapidly implemented or used to a higher capacity to help us work through the challenges presented by COVID-19. 

As we continue to move through the pandemic and into the vaccination phase, technology has once again proven to be extremely useful.

Our organization is a bit unique in that we transitioned in 2016 to a joint operating venture with two large health care systems. As a result of the transition, we found ourselves with a Cerner® inpatient electronic medical record and an Epic® outpatient/clinic electronic medical record. One can only imagine the interface challenges we experienced over the past several years as we are working towards the implementation of Epic in the hospital setting. We found ourselves consistently maintaining and accepting the status quo as we knew trying to change any of our electronic systems was going to be difficult at best. In addition, we had some leaders hesitant to utilize technology to its full potential as change during difficult times can be difficult itself.

We quickly identified the need to work diligently during the pandemic to identify technology barriers and overcome obstacles through workarounds. Once these barriers were broken down, we suddenly realized we could leverage technology to our advantage as we waged the battle against COVID-19. It’s safe to say we were blindsided by the length of this battle and had we not utilized technology to its full potential. We would have struggled immensely to keep up and move forward.  

One of the first applications we were able to utilize at a much higher capacity is Microsoft Teams. As leaders became comfortable using Microsoft Teams, we found it a great application which help us outline processes, manage schedules, inventory items, and coordinate teamwork. Multiple team members can use the application simultaneously to input information and communicate progress on projects. We are able to use Microsoft Teams to help us collect a PPE inventory at not only our three hospital locations but also in the more than 40 clinics locations within our system. Obviously, having a good grasp on PPE supplies is crucial during the pandemic. With leaders at all sites able to provide real-time inventory, it is crucial to providing adequate supplies. 

Likewise, we use Microsoft Teams to organize a robust labor pool. While we have a centralized staffing department, they are not responsible for doing all the staffing/scheduling for all our departments. This can create gaps and barriers in knowing who is available. Leaders are able to input staff availability into Microsoft Teams in real-time. We can identify the various skill and competency levels of all our nursing colleagues and other labor pool members. Our labor pool leader can then look at the information and appropriately assign colleagues to best utilize their skills and abilities to fill openings.   

One goal was to limit COVID-19 positive patients entering our organization. We needed to minimize the risk of transmission to other patients and our colleagues and limit face-to-face visits by offering telehealth visits when possible. We worked diligently to limit the spread by sending COVID-19 patients to an offsite Fever and Upper Respiratory Infection (FURI) clinic. We put all the technology pieces in place to care for patients at this site. It was amazing how quickly this was accomplished, and we were successful in limiting the exposure and spread of COVID-19 in our community.

We also set-up online scheduling for our Urgent Care sites. By offering online scheduling, we were able to triage patients to determine which patients should receive care at an Urgent Care, the FURI clinic, or remotely via telehealth. The telehealth visits allow patients to access their provider remotely while minimizing potential exposure to COVID-19 patients and likewise decrease colleague exposure to a possible infected patient. Both the online scheduling and telehealth initiatives create efficiencies in scheduling and positively impacted consumer experience. We are currently progressing to online scheduling for primary care providers as well.

Because we needed to restrict visits throughout the hospital units, we found an effective form of communication between patients and their families. We use iPads as a communication tool to connect patients with their loved ones. We are able to provide condition updates and include families in discharge planning. We found iPads could also be very useful as an interpretive services tool while limiting the exposure of our interpreters. The iPad also creates a more robust interpretive option by using the previous phone service. In addition, providers use iPads to limit their frequent visits in and out of the patient’s room.    

As we continue to move through the pandemic and into the vaccination phase, technology has once again proven to be extremely useful. We have generated reports to identify our patients who are eligible for the vaccine adequately. We have used the messaging feature in MyChart as a communication method to notify patients of their eligibility to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. This has saved time and streamlined the notification process. Although we still need to contact some patients by phone, the number is significantly less than if we had not utilized the MyChart messaging feature. 

These are just a handful of initiatives we’ve implemented during the pandemic. We are currently exploring the use of a virtual nurse on our acute care units to better manage our patients’ care. Although a difficult time, the pandemic has pushed us to rapidly innovate and implement technology that we previously struggled to move forward. 

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In 2019, I had just boarded a flight back from a vacation with my wife when we received one of those dreaded phone calls that so many of us worry about. My older sister had suffered a severe seizure and, while stable, would be having surgery in the coming days. When we landed, my wife and I visited my sister in the hospital, the first of several hospitals where we would visit her over the coming months.

In one of her rooms, I noticed an iPad hanging on the wall in a mounted holder, collecting dust. When I asked the nurse what it was for, I was told that it was for patients to use to access their records, but few were taking advantage of it. During my sister’s hospital stay, she neither picked it up, nor did any of her visitors.

When we think about integrating technology to improve the patient experience, it is essential to realize that while the opportunities are endless, it does not mean all should be pursued. Generally speaking, patient experience is notoriously difficult to improve because it is dependent on an organization’s culture. Technology can be an important catalyst for change, a critical component to ensuring a consistent patient journey, and a vital means to access care. At the same time, not all technology should necessarily be implemented. Tech still cannot substitute for essential human-to-human connections that are unique to the missions of healthcare organizations.

Thus far in Adventist HealthCare’s patient experience journey, we are using tools to better understand our patients, including psychographic factors like emotions, throughout their patient journeys. To accomplish this goal, we are utilizing AI, natural language processing, and big data.

Early on, we identified that we were over-reliant on the data from the CMS mandated HCAHPS survey. The HCAHPS survey is long, specific, and can only collect data either by phone or by traditional mail. While the HCAPHS data offers valuable insights, we knew we needed to expand our listening methods to learn more about patient preferences and what aspects of care are most important to their overall care rating.

As a supplement to the HCAHPS survey, we are the first healthcare company in the US to engage with a company called Worthix. Worthix utilizes AI and natural language processing to explore a patient’s open-text feedback and analyze the data in aggregate. We are currently sending Worthix “dialogues” to patients who receive inpatient care but are not selected in the sample to obtain the HCAHPS survey.

As we expanded beyond the HCAHPS survey, we realized we had several different data components that were not connected. We felt like we needed to find a way to collect and then analyze all our patient listening methods. We discovered that we had nearly ten sources of data where we get direct regular patient feedback, including the HCAHPS survey, Worthix dialogues, online reviews, and others. We are using a Press Ganey product called NarrativeDX, where we have connected direct feeds of unedited patient comments from these sources. NarrativeDX analyzes all the patient comments and groups them into insights that match the HCAHPS survey, which we use as outcome measures.

Once the data is collected and analyzed, visualization makes it simple and actionable. To add more impact, both NarrativeDX and Worthix allow us to share data down to the individual unit level to make it actionable for clinicians. We have also used data visualization and automation to create a scorecard and a dashboard, breaking data down to each individual’s clinical unit, department, or location.

This data enables us to solve existing problems and be intentional about designing the patient journey in any unit or specialty based on the preferences of previous and potential patients. The data allows teams to anticipate patient needs better and to plan for the future.

The challenges to implementing our data strategy have centered on survey fatigue from patients leading to low response rates. We have shortened our surveys where possible, made them accessible by text message, and arranged our system so that no patient receives more than one survey type from us. Additionally, pulling fragmented systems together for collecting patient feedback together has been challenging. This problem is a hallmark of healthcare systems and one that is ripe for an artificial intelligence solution.

Our next step in our patient experience technology journey is to find solutions that make accessing, receiving, and paying for care simpler and more reliable for our patients. From there, many of the opportunities we have identified are in care post-discharge.

One of the boundaries that we have set in using technology to improve patient experience is preserving the parts of the journey that require human compassion. There are also some areas where automation is possible but would detract from the human-to-human parts of the patient experience. For example, the technology to automate patient transport using autopilot technology from cars is here. But the transitions in care involving transportation can be especially stressful for a patient. Transporting patients to surgery or a test is often where conversations occur, during which patients discuss their emotions and are reassured or calmed down. I also do not foresee technology being used to deliver news like a cancer diagnosis. Implementing technology must be respectful of these important moments where our system lives out on our mission to, “Extend God’s care through the ministry of physical, mental, and spiritual healing.”

Technologies like AI with real-time response, natural language processing, and big data can help us know and remember our patients in ways that wouldn’t be possible without these tools, helping to customize a patient’s care. As more healthcare systems focus on patient experience, the temptation is to over-tech for standardization and consistency. Still, the future successful hospitals will know how to blend groundbreaking new tools with the human connection required in delivering compassionate, empathetic care.

When we analyze our comments, the most detailed and impactful we find are about how our team members treat our patients. Technology can be used to create intimacy with the patient so long as it is deployed next to a people-driven system for delivering consistently empathic and compassionate care.

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