‘Best is More’ for Dynamic Patient Engagement Experiences that Deliver

Updated on December 19, 2021
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By Kristen Jacobsen, vice president marketing and OmniChannel engagement, RevSpring

There are more digital communications and financial engagement solutions available in healthcare than ever before. But “more is more” does not apply when it comes to interacting with unique individuals, some of whom will not respond (or even read) a text or email message. Rather than bombarding all patients with more digital messages—often on top of traditional print communications—an intelligent and nuanced approach is proven to be highly effective. 

Think of this as “best is more.”

Best is more is predicated on knowing how every patient chooses to engage and then using that knowledge to tailor the most precise communications and best delivery strategies for them. How is this possible, particularly for large health systems with hundreds of thousands of patients?

Journey visualization tools that let providers see how patients are responding (or not responding) to current communication is the place to begin. Such tools, combined with intelligent data analytics, allow providers to pull and leverage insight for targeted communications that meet patients where they are most comfortable along the communications continuum. When used correctly, such tools also shed light on communications subtleties like tone, messaging, and timing. 

Data analytics can identify many characteristics—demographic details, financial history and status, engagement channel patterns and much, much more—that patients share by their behavior. From there, patients can be grouped according to “personas” that allows data to help predict best ways to communicate with people in those groups. 

But that’s just the beginning.

Personas are simply a starting point for understanding patient populations. Seeing how people respond to messages within various persona groups is where the real “magic” happens. Magic means measuring responses in ways never before possible. The resulting insight allows providers to continuously finetune persona groups to develop and deliver increasingly more precise communications. This process is ongoing because, “there’s no end to better!”

The best part of all: the data does the work.

Providers should consider the considerable benefits to be gained from precise patient engagement: up to 30 percent cost reduction, a 10 percent payment lift and a 30 percent increase in patient response rates.

Precise Engagement Best Practice Reminders

As providers begin adopting this more sophisticated patient engagement approach, here are key points to remember:

·       Using new channels does not mean using all channels for all patients.

·       Different people respond to different messages and different mediums.

·       Data exists today to tailor precise messaging and delivery channels based on patient behavior.

·       Journey visualization tools are key to pulling and leveraging this patient insight. 

·       Other industries have been successfully using data to develop precise and highly effective customer engagement strategies, and the time is now for healthcare. 

·       If providers just “do more” or just “do digital,” they will miss or even alienate many patients in the process.

·       Best is more!

The Editorial Team at Healthcare Business Today is made up of skilled healthcare writers and experts, led by our managing editor, Daniel Casciato, who has over 25 years of experience in healthcare writing. Since 1998, we have produced compelling and informative content for numerous publications, establishing ourselves as a trusted resource for health and wellness information. We offer readers access to fresh health, medicine, science, and technology developments and the latest in patient news, emphasizing how these developments affect our lives.