Improving Patient Engagement Through Telehealth: Tips & Strategies
People’s focus on their health has reportedly increased over the last decade. One of the major reasons behind this has been the increased accessibility to their healthcare data. For instance, in 2017, 47% of the patients reported that they were unable to access their healthcare data, as stated by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. On the other, in 2022, only 1 in 5 patients reported their inaccessibility to their healthcare data.
In modern-day healthcare practice, by improving access to patient health information, patient engagement has been significantly improved. This has not only encourgaed pateints to proactively participate in their care delivery, but also inspired better collaboration, communication between providers to delivery holistic care.
Moving ahead in this digital healthcare landscape, where virtual care delivery has paved the roadmap for the future of healthcare, patient engagement will play the role of a catalyst in improving patient engagement.
Despite the availability of patient portals, only 30% of patients regularly use them to engage with their healthcare activities, according to a report by ONC. However, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining; telehealth platforms can address these challenges and improve patient engagement significantly.
As a healthcare provider, you might ask, how can telehealth improve patient engagement?
Well, in this blog, let’s explore how to improve patient engagement in telehealth and have a look at some of the best tips for better patient-provider relationships in telehealth.
So, without further ado, let’s get started!
Create a Seamless and Intuitive Patient Experience
When you patient is using a telehealth software, it will probabaly be their only point of contact to access care. That is why it is important for you to give them with a seamless and intuitive patient experince while using the telehealth platform. The best way to do that is by designing a user-friendly interface that is accessible to patient of all ages and even for those who are not comfortable using technology.
Now, let’s walk through the process of creating a pleasant experience for patients while using the telehealth app:
1. Appointment Booking: The first thing the patient would like to do is book an appointment with their provider. So by designing the platform where the patient can find clear scheduling options, the entire appointment booking process can be streamlined for your practice while giving the patient what they were looking for.
2. Easy Navigation: Your telehealth platform will probably have more than just the feature of video conferencing right? To make the patient easily navigate through all the features, user-friendly interface custom healthcare app development is necessary.
3. Quick Load Time: Remember, while you only have one patient using telehealth platform, the patients have several other platforms to choose from. To keep patients on your telehealth software, ensure the loading time is less than 3 seconds and have no to minimum technical glitches.
Guide to Designing a Patient-Centric Telehealth Platform
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Other than the intuitive design and user-friendly interface of your telehealth platform, trust is also a major factor that helps in increasing your patient engagement. The key to gaining patients’ trust is to build strong patient-provider relationships over the platform. Here are some ways you can lay the foundation to build a strong patient-provider relationship:
1. Effective Communication Channels: Encourage patients to proactively use their communication channels such as video conferencing, audio calls and secure messgaings through chats.
2. Treatment and Care Planning: Actively involve patients in their planning their care planning and roadmap to their treatment. This will help in improving patient adherence and encourage them to be actively involved in their care journey.
3. Patient Feedback: Incorporate a patient feedback mechanism where patients can actually give their feedback when using the telehealth platform. However, the efforts do not stop there; incorporate those features into care delivery, which will make them feel that their feedback is valued, which can boost your relationship with your patients.
4. Empathetic Interactions: When interacting with patients, take a empathetic approach. This will help you in understanding the patient’s condition better, and they will also feel like their voice is valued. Furthermore, with active listening you can help patients better helping them to improve their health outcomes in a much better way.
Empower Patients Through Education and Self-Management
One practice that has been constant even in digital healthcare practice is patient education, and the best way to keep the patient engaged in their healthcare is through education and self-care management. Here is how you can empower patients and increase their engagement through education and patient education:
1. Patient-friendly Educational Resoruces: Empower patients with enough resources educational resoruces which can help patients learn more about their condition while providing them with tips to improve their health outcomes. Apart from that, one thing that you need to understand here is to develop educational resources for all various health conditions that your patient might be suffering from.
2. Patient Progress Tracking Tools: Though a patient portal has been needed in virtual care delivery, often times, the lack of enough progress tracking tools can become conflicting. Tools like medication adherence, care plan, treatment adherence, etc., can help the patient track their health metrics and goals. This is crucial in improving patient engagement in the remote healthcare landscape.
3. Remote Monitoring Capabilities: For patients suffering from multiple chronic conditions, empowering them with remote monitoring features can lead to proactive participation.
4. Informed Decision-Making: Another way to inspire patient engagement is by involving patients while making clinical decisions and also asking them for their preferences. This way, informed decisions will be made, and the responsibility for health outcomes will be shared by both parties.
Leverage Technology to Enhance Engagement
Technology has been at the helm of patient engagement in the modern-day healthcare landscape. If implemented rightly, they can define your practice by improving patient adherence rates and simplifying virtual care. Here are some of the best strategies for motivating patients in telehealth using cutting-edge technology:
1. AI-Powered Chatbots: Patients often require support during the initial stages of onboarding or even when using the telehealth platform. During this stage, implementing AI-powered chatbots for patients to assist them in support and navigation can improve patient engagement significantly.
2. Gamification for Adherence: To improve patient adherence with their treatment plans certain elements of the care journey can be gamified. This will not only generate interest in patients to use the telehealth platform but also motivate patients to adhere to treatment plans.
3. mHealth Telehealth Apps: Keep your patients in control of their health using mobile application. With telehealth mobile app development, patients can access their health information anytime, anywhere, and at any given moment. This is one of the best strategies to increase patient engagement.
4. Wearable Devices Integration: Integrate wearable devices with your telehealth application to reflect patient data in real-time and provide personalized insights about patient health instantly.
Apart from these, it is important for you to stay up-to-date with the emerging telehealth technologies to optimize your patients’ experince. This way your practice will also be moving ahead with the trends and patients would be delighted to see innovative solutions for their healthcare which can prove effective in improving patient engagement.
Measure and Improve Patient Engagement
Last but not least, the most important aspect of maintaining and improving patient engagement is tracking and making improvements to improve patient engagement. Here are some ways in which you can keep on improving your patient engagement:
1. Identify and Track Patient Engagement KPIs: The telehealth software gives you data about every aspect of it. Here, you need to define your key performance indicators for patient engagement, like medication adherence, use of communication channels, etc. This will help you track patient engagement levels and give you the loopholes in them to improve them.
2. Surveys and Feedback Analysis: Analyze all your patient feedback with the surveys. This will give you all the data to identify all the areas for improvement and take necessary action to improve patient engagement and experience.
3. Evaluate and Refine Patient Engagement Strategies: Last but not least, one of the best strategies to improve patient engagement is to keep on refining your patient engagement strategies to keep patients engaged in their healthcare journey.
Conclusion
Patient engagement has always been an integral part of patient’s healthcare journey to improve patient outcomes. While custom telehealth software allows you to use telecommuncaition to improve engagement it can also be used to keep the patients engaged in their entire care journey.
Let this blog be your guide to improving patient engagement using telehealth software which can not only lead to better patient satisfaction levels but also improve patient adherence levels.
Frequently Asked Questions
Improve telehealth communication by: actively listening, using clear and simple language, maintaining eye contact with the camera, encouraging patient questions, and providing concise, actionable next steps. Build rapport through genuine engagement and empathy.
To boost telehealth adherence, focus on building a strong patient-provider relationship, setting clear expectations, and providing consistent support. Use patient-centered communication, offer tailored treatment plans, and leverage technology for reminders and educational resources. Empower patients to track progress and celebrate milestones to foster motivation.
Measure patient engagement in telehealth by tracking appointment attendance, patient portal activity (logins, messages, accessed information), survey feedback on satisfaction and experience, adherence to treatment plans, and health outcome improvements.
Technology tools to enhance telehealth engagement: Patient portals, video conferencing platforms, mobile apps, wearable devices, remote patient monitoring systems, AI-powered chatbots, and personalized educational content.
Build trust and rapport virtually by: actively listening, showing empathy, using clear and simple language, maintaining eye contact (on camera), respecting patient time, and ensuring confidentiality. Personalize interactions and validate patient feelings to create a strong connection.