Patient Engagement ranks right up there with other warm and wooly intentions.  It just sounds so nice!

But hang on: everybody knows they must get close to their customers, so why is this such a hot topic for health providers now?  Answer: because providers were never close to their patients. But now they’re trying. 

It hasn’t worked.  I’ll posit a few reasons why.

HIPPA

HIPPA rules are now broad and rigid – every time patients want to “engage” not only do they need username and password, but now the infamous 6 digit code.

People simply don’t like apps that have so many barriers to entry.  

EMR/EPR Culture – put everything into one big bucket

• All health providers have an EMR.
• The EMR culture pervades all digital interactions – internal and external. So, typically patient engagement solutions are created within that culture.
• You can have lots of training and cajole staff to use the EMR system successfully, but that doesn’t work with patients.

The “Now we Got You” mentality

Engagement platforms start off with appointment reminders and test results.  Good. 

But then the business office and management notice this delivery system.  So, they send patients their bills, and payment reminders, and material from insurers.  And privacy updates and announcements.  Soon it begins to look like your regular email – except there’s no automatic Junk folder.

What is the Result of all this?

Simply put: poor consistent patient uptake.  I emphasize consistency because for a digital engagement platform to be truly useful, you need a large majority of patients to use it. 

The operational result of low patient uptake is that clinics have to keep a “manual” fallback - just in case.  The same questions you asked patients before still need to be asked, and entered into the system.  Clinic work flows become even more complex.  

Engaging Differently

Tech companies with a different culture than EMRs are now successfully providing patients with digital services – services that are user friendly and therefore frequently used.  Most are in secondary care where they replace services normally provided in the clinic – education, protocols, home care, triage and physio therapy.  Sometimes they interact with the EMR, or are a parallel service.  My company, PatientApps, is one of them.