How the Digital Front Door, Practice Enhances Patient Experience

Healthcare has been moving to a more digital, streamlined patient experience from registration through clinical care and final bill payment. The transition from manual, retroactive processes to digital experiences that help with clinician and consumer engagement has been slow for many organizations.

Consumers have demanded more options, including more self-service options, less complicated medical bills, increased engagement before service and more patient payment options.

Current healthcare consumer engagement landscape

With the emergence of COVID-19, in order to help slow the spread of the contagious virus, many healthcare organizations flipped the way care was previously delivered to help maintain access to high-quality, affordable care.

For many clinicians, this meant delivering enhanced care digitally - using everything from telehealth for patient visits and patient portals for socially distanced registration, patient intake, communications and new contactless forms of bill payment.

And for patients, the new normal has created a whole new healthcare experience. Whereas 11 percent of patients accessed healthcare virtually or through telehealth in 2019, now three-quarters of patients are using technology for healthcare access.

Now that the digital consumer experience has been turned on, many clinicians and their patients are finding they cannot - or are unwilling to - simply turn it back off.

Roughly 83 percent of patients in a survey said they anticipate using telehealth beyond the pandemic. About 68 percent of clinicians are motivated to use more telehealth services because of the experience they have had during the pandemic.

In the past year, clinicians and consumers have realized that other key components of the digital consumer experience (e.g., financial experience) are also possible through technology. Healthcare organizations, for example, have complied with new price transparency rules from the federal government, and many have gone above and beyond the rule to help deliver personalized cost estimates to consumers, even before they show up for a service.

The use of healthcare technology to offer a more digital encounter has finally aligned clinician and consumer experiences, creating a major opportunity for healthcare organizations to help meet consumer desires for a convenient experience without sacrificing clinician satisfaction and well-being. Additionally, leveraging new digital capabilities (e.g., telehealth and patient portals for enhanced consumer communication) could be essential tools for addressing new challenges. By enabling clinicians to have advanced access to these tools, they can be better equipped to address issues such as worsening conditions from pandemic-related care delays.

Importance of the digital front door in the modern era of consumerism

Providers have their hands on the knob of the digital front door that consumers have always wanted. They now need to push the door open by refining digital health capabilities for a post-pandemic, consumer-like healthcare environment, thus helping consumers to have the digital health literacy needed to meaningfully engage with new care, preventative care and administrative options.

Healthcare organizations must also learn from experience. Early patient portals and forms of consumer engagement tools barely scratched the surface of technology’s potential to meet the changing expectations of consumers.

Consumers now expect more due to the evolution of consumer-facing technologies. The digital front door must now engage consumers throughout their health journey, encompassing a healthcare organization’s entire network and interacting with numerous EHRs and health IT systems to help solve unique business needs.

The digital front door can mean many things and take on various forms. But to be truly effective, a digital front door must serve the needs of clinicians and consumers alike.

“We look at the digital front door as the primary access point for people to find healthcare, understand options and be guided to the right interaction mode – whether it’s virtual, asynchronous or in-person,” says David Harse, vice president and general manager, consumer and patient engagement at Cerner.

 Defining a digital practice, how it can impact the patient experience

The digital front door is the entryway into a healthcare organization, and it can prove even more impactful when complemented by a digital practice. With advanced technologies, healthcare organizations can provide care to patients in new and engaging ways outside of in-person visits.

“A digital practice comprises the electronic capabilities and experiences needed to engage patients along their health journey based on their care plan,” Harse notes. “It can be as simple as a child’s sick visit that necessitates a prescription and follow-up care to as complex as chronic condition management and the need for longitudinal care over a person’s lifetime. A digital practice can help the patient tie together their diagnoses, treatments and next steps.”

At its most impactful, the digital practice helps shift the focus from episodic to longitudinal care, from sickness to well-being, in the name of prevention. The key to prevention is empowering patients with proper education and other resources to take ownership of their health.

Central to the success of a digital practice is its role in providing a single source of truth that enables effective care coordination among clinicians, as well as between clinicians and patients.

“A digital practice provides the definitive source of truth. It connects to the provider, care manager, patient and nurse. It has the potential to reduce so much of the friction about which people complain in their healthcare experiences,” advises David Bradshaw, Cerner Senior Vice President of Consumer and Employer Solutions. “What’s more, it can truly empower patients to take on their own tasks. They should be managing those tasks as much as clinicians and technology developers do to provide the accountability necessary for improving overall care.”

If the main goal of a digital practice is prevention, then all stakeholders must buy-in and act upon data-driven intelligence. Organizations also need to align on providing quality data that can be shared across disparate systems to help take the longitudinal record to the next level.

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About Cerner

Cerner’s health technologies connect people and information systems at thousands of contracted provider facilities worldwide dedicated to creating smarter and better care for individuals and communities. Recognized globally for innovation, Cerner assists clinicians in making care decisions and assists organizations in managing the health of their populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial system to help manage day-to-day revenue functions, as well as a wide range of services to support clinical, financial and operational needs, focused on people. For more information, visit Cerner.com, The Cerner Blog or connect on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or The Cerner Podcast. Nasdaq: CERN. Healthcare is too important to stay the same.

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