Dash Talk: Recent Episodes
Relatient
Welcome to Dash Talk a podcast by Relatient, where we explore new ways to simplify healthcare access. We examine new and emerging trends in healthcare to help address challenges with the patient experience and identify new strategies and solutions to drive better access to care.
One Pediatrics serves patients in Louisville, Kentucky, and surrounding counties. With multiple practices serving the children and parents of Kentucky, new Relatient programs have helped them maximize patient outreach, communications, and scheduling.
One Pediatrics uses Relatient services to reach patients throughout the year. Kellie Doligale, the Care Coordinator, will source the appropriate recipients for custom messages depending on the practitioner's needs. “We write messages to people we haven’t seen in a while, or we also make it seasonal, like around vaccinations,” said Doligale. In addition to customized and seasonal communications, Doligale implements a monthly birthday check, cross references to see if those patients are due for a well-visit, and then customizes the message around those information points.
“We’ve had the best success using text messaging communication, we feel it reaches the most people, and we get the best response from it,” said Doligale. “Because it’s a text message, we have to be careful about the length of the message.” The shorter format of the messaging requires clarity and conciseness.
Feedback across all practices praises the communication system. “Our parents consistently report getting appointments in a timely manner,” said Doligale. Initially, One Pediatrics allowed the scheduling of sick visits only. However, once they experienced its success, they also extended the option for well-visits. The practices report lower no-show rates as well.
In this episode of Dash Talk, The Becker’s Healthcare Podcast host, Laura Dyrda sat down with David Dyke, Chief Product Officer at Relatient, and Arun Mohan, President of Relatient. Together, they discuss the role of scheduling in defining elite customer experience.
Between staying on hold, finding an ideal location, and checking for availability, scheduling a healthcare appointment can be a very tedious process. “Anyone who has tried to schedule an appointment knows how hard it is,” says Mohan. However, this is just as hard for doctors and medical groups, and the challenge is not all doctors are created equal. “You got to simplify a lot of the underlying workflows and operations to make it possible.”
When you have something complicated like scheduling, there is traditionally a very steep learning curve in becoming familiar with factors such as locations and rules. "There's generally a physical binder or Sharepoint slides that are constantly being updated,” Dyke explains, “so one of the things that folks are looking for is technology to help their newest scheduler be as effective as their senior scheduler.”
Creating a digital patient journey eases the burden of scheduling on providers and staff; however, the deployment of an online scheduling system is a fairly difficult process. “We are really trying to help our customers deliver the right balance between precision scheduling and patient-friendly scheduling,” Dyke explains.
In a recent survey, they found patients love self-scheduling when it works and asks for information that is readily known. “If you start asking secondary and tertiary additional questions we see a really significant drop-off point,” Dyke explains. Focusing on the things that matter most, such as allowing the patient to book and confirm an appointment, is most vital in a digital patient journey.
When asked how health systems can improve the digital patient's journey, Dyke and Mohan provide two factors: focusing on access and integrating a digital patient journey into every activity.
“One of the most important considerations in how you select a provider is convenience and availability,” Mahon explained. When considering how to do this for provider groups, the answer is multi-faceted. Moreover, integrating these into every activity is vital as well. “A good example of this is recall management,” says Mahon.
Tune in to learn more about all of the factors that go into creating a seamless, elite scheduling experience for both patients and providers in healthcare.
Healthcare organizations’ ability to connect with their patients is critical to ensuring their various types of quality care.
In the debut episode of the podcast “Dash Talk,” host Gabrielle Bejarano talked with Eric Krepfle, Vice President of Product Management at Relatient, a patient engagement organization that helps healthcare providers and practices foster better relationships with their patients. Health maintenance is a main factor in trying to bridge that gap. So how does it work? By maintaining persistent contact with particular patients, Krepfle said.
Patients with high-risk lifestyles, people who are battling chronic illnesses, and those who live alone can greatly benefit from a health maintenance campaign via their provider, Krepfle said. Oftentimes, it can serve as a reminder in getting ahead of possible issues that are likely to turn up in patients who are more at risk for health follow-ups.
“These health maintenance campaigns should mean outreach to the patient who is handling or dealing with some of these situations, and it provides that constant communication with them about that,” Krepfle said. “They’re to demonstrate the patient is in an overall community of concern, and the healthcare provider wants to demonstrate that.”
Successful campaigning is key to patient engagement because it keeps both the provider and patient actively in communication about the latter’s health concerns. However, despite an increase in patient engagement strategies being used in healthcare, Krepfle said general practitioners tend to be behind. “The one type of provider that I’d wish would use them more are just basic general practices,” Krepfle said. “We want to encourage them more to stay in touch with their patient census.”
He said consistent contact allows the provider to better inform and keep track of their patients, and what they might be up against. In addition, campaigns can help healthcare providers promote other services and wellness advice, such as weight loss, exercise, or gym membership information. The result is exemplary customer retention and trust.
“Keeping in contact with patients outside of that medical situation also promotes that friendly environment, so that if a patient does need assistance, they’re more likely to contact the provider who stayed in touch with them … because they're getting these health maintenance campaigns,” Krepfle said.
Krepfle maintains that patients can be looked at as customers, and the motto of retaining current customers is more efficient than searching for new ones. He added that healthcare providers routinely staying in contact with their patients is just the surface, noting that other industries have found success in customer retention via campaigns.