In this blog, we’ll explore why seamless integration of these data sources is crucial, identify common challenges and offer actionable steps for smooth transitions. By the end, you’ll have a clearer path to enhancing patient messaging and the tools to achieve it.

The Integration Imperative: Why Healthcare Needs Unified Data

Inconsistent patient communication and care gaps occur when data silos isolate vital information. It’s like trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces; the picture never fully forms. When EMR, pop health, CRM and payer data operate independently, patient care suffers.

This is why integrating data is critical – it creates a comprehensive view of a patient, enabling more personalized, informed and effective interactions. Understanding the role of each data source is the first step:

• EMR / EHR systems contain comprehensive patient records, clinical data, medication history, treatment plans, etc.
• Pop health data provides insights into trends and outcomes, preventative care metrics, etc.
• CRM systems manage patient interactions, engagement history, etc.
• Payer data reflects financial aspects, claims data, utilization data, etc.

Together, they form a holistic view of patient care and communication—a view too often fragmented.

A Lack of Data Integration: The Top Pain Points

Data Silos: A Major Dilemma

Data silos are a major obstacle in patient communication. They hinder the seamless flow of patient information across departments and systems, leading to inefficiencies and errors. Imagine a patient having to repeat their medical history multiple times because their information isn’t shared between systems—frustrating for both patients and providers.

When healthcare organizations operate in silos, they miss out on valuable insights that could improve patient outcomes. A lack of integration means incomplete data for decision-making, leading to inconsistent patient experiences and care gaps. For healthcare providers, this situation results in lost opportunities to deliver personalized care and reduced efficiency in managing patient populations.

Inconsistent Patient Communication

Inconsistent communication in healthcare has severe consequences. Patients may receive conflicting information from different departments, leading to confusion and mistrust. According to Artera research, large health systems have 11+ digital health vendors on average that communicate (e.g., text, IVR, etc.) independently with patients. Sixty-five percent of patients report receiving messages that are sequenced “out of order” by their provider, and a study by the Joint Commission found that 70% of serious adverse events in healthcare are due to communication breakdowns.

For healthcare providers, inconsistent communication can result in missed appointments, non-compliance with treatment plans and poor patient satisfaction scores. It’s essential to recognize these pain points and take proactive steps to integrate data sources effectively. By doing so, healthcare organizations can provide clear, consistent messaging that enhances patient trust and engagement.

Integration Challenges

Integrating diverse data systems is no small feat. Technical challenges, cultural resistance and budget constraints are common obstacles. Systems often have varying architectures, making seamless data exchange difficult. Additionally, healthcare organizations frequently face resistance from staff accustomed to established workflows.

One significant challenge is the need for data standardization. Different systems may use varying data formats and terminologies, impeding interoperability. Overcoming these challenges requires collaboration between IT professionals, clinical teams and leadership. Successful integration demands a clear strategy, investment in infrastructure and a commitment to change management.

Best Practices for Integrating Data Sources

Integrating EMR, pop health, CRM and payer data for better patient communication involves unifying patient information from multiple systems to create a cohesive, actionable platform. This requires a strategic approach.

First, conduct a comprehensive assessment of your current systems to identify gaps and opportunities for integration. Identify the key data sources across your health system and engage stakeholders from all relevant departments to ensure alignment and buy-in.

Next, build a unified data architecture and prioritize data standardization. Implement industry-standard protocols and terminologies to facilitate seamless data exchange. Consider leveraging middle-ware solutions that bridge disparate systems, streamlining data flow.

Next, incorporate advanced technologies such as AI and machine learning, Chatbots, or Natural Language Processing to analyze or summarize key data for personalized insights. Invest in robust cybersecurity measures to protect patient data during the integration process.

Real-World Success Stories: Data Integration

1. Cleveland Clinic: Cleveland Clinic integrates EHR data with wearable devices and patient-reported outcomes. They use this to send personalized messages about recovery milestones after surgeries. This approach improved patient engagement and reduced readmissions by 15%.

2. Kaiser Permanente: Kaiser Permanente combines SDOH data with EHRs to identify at-risk patients. They send targeted messages offering resources for food insecurity or housing assistance, improving population health outcomes.

3. Mount Sinai Hospital: By integrating lab results, EHRs, and imaging data, Mount Sinai developed a messaging system that alerts patients and providers when critical follow-ups are needed. This reduced missed follow-ups by 20%.

Artera Pulse Outreach Has Flexible Integration With Unlimited Data Sources

Artera’s integration-first philosophy means we use the data from your EHR and other preferred systems to create connected patient experiences.

Artera Pulse Outreach, one of our latest products, is designed to integrate effortlessly with EMR, pop health, CRM and payer data, and offers healthcare providers a comprehensive solution for patient outreach. With Artera Pulse Outreach, organizations can automate patient messaging, ensuring timely, consistent and personalized communication.

This innovative tool empowers healthcare providers to bridge care gaps, improve patient engagement and drive better health outcomes. By leveraging Artera Pulse Outreach, organizations can set up dynamic patient lists, automate messaging workflows and track the impact of their outreach efforts.

Enhance Patient Messaging with Artera Pulse Outreach

Artera Pulse Outreach takes patient messaging to the next level. By integrating various data sources, healthcare providers can deliver targeted messages that resonate best with patients. Imagine sending personalized wellness tips, preventative screening outreach and follow-up care instructions—all tailored to each patient’s unique needs.

With Artera Pulse Outreach, healthcare organizations can achieve this level of personalized communication effortlessly. Automated workflows and customizable message templates simplify the process, while real-time analytics provide insights into message effectiveness. It’s a win-win for both providers and patients, fostering stronger relationships and improving healthcare outcomes.

EMR Integration Paves the Way for Seamless Patient Communication

By breaking down data silos and fostering seamless communication, healthcare providers can deliver personalized, consistent and timely patient messaging. EMR integration – in addition to other data integration – is critical to enabling a holistic approach to patient messaging.

Artera integrates with many of the leading EMRs including Epic, MEDITECH, eClinicalWorks, ModMed, Greenway Health, athenahealth, Oracle Health and more. Dive deeper into Artera’s integrations here.

Artera Pulse Outreach offers a comprehensive solution for achieving this integration, empowering healthcare providers to enhance patient engagement and improve health outcomes. With a collaborative approach, strong leadership and a commitment to change, healthcare organizations can pave the way for seamless patient communication and a brighter future in healthcare.

The post Integrating EMR, Pop Health, CRM and Payer Data for Better Patient Communication appeared first on Artera.

As these systems work to modernize their patient engagement and improve the experience they provide, Artera collaborates with their staff to automate conversations, deliver scheduling information and provide robust analytics that enable them to tune their communications to drive deeper engagement and follow through with their patients. When using Artera Harmony, customers realize benefits including reduced gaps in care, improved no-show rates, better slot utilization, better patient response rates and improved patient satisfaction.

Now more than ever patients have more choices in where they receive their care. This creates a competitive environment for providers and health systems to ensure not only do they offer a variety of services and their providers are well received by patients but also that their digital experience meets the patient on their terms, desired channels and within their timeframes. These new demands for a consumer-like, simplified and timely experience put more pressure on the patient experience than ever before and those who deliver a modern experience have the opportunity to reduce leakage, increase referrals and drive greater patient satisfaction.

Today, we are announcing two new analytics dashboards that are available with Artera Harmony – No-Show Recovery and Patient Engagement Benchmark Dashboard.

Customers will gain visibility into no-show rescheduling and the associated financial benefits and benchmark bullseyes that organizations can use as a target for improving their patient engagement compared to their peers.

Modern Health Provider Dashboards – Patient Communication 

First, our new No-Show Recovery Dashboard delivers insights that enable health systems to see the value of following up with patients who chose not to arrive at their appointments for one reason or another.  All Providers will benefit from understanding:

• The total number of confirmed appointments as their baseline
• The total number of no-shows that were rescheduled
• The percent of no-shows recovered and the estimated total revenue recovered 

For those health systems that have multiple practices, they will gain the additional benefit of seeing no-shows and revenue recovery for each practice.

For example, one organization was able to recover an estimated $2.8M by rescheduling 18,000 no-shows over a 6-month period.

When combined with our “No-Show Outreach” template in Artera Harmony, providers can automate the conversation to recover a no-show patient by attempting to reschedule them to try and prevent leakage or perpetuate a gap in care because the patient didn’t follow up. This template is built based on leading best practices and is ready for immediate use. It provides the ability to request if the patient would like to reschedule and assist them, capture a reason if they choose not to reschedule, and provide access to a staff member if needed. More than fifty templates are available in our Conversation Packs to improve patient communication and engagement.

Second, our new Patient Engagement Benchmark Dashboard helps healthcare providers better understand how they are performing in comparison to their peers. Using obfuscated patient engagement data we have established benchmarks representative of the 700+ systems and their associated types and specialty. This is a tremendous amount of data correlated across 2.2 billion messages annually, reaching 100+ million patients – that not only shines a light on the performance of the past and present, but gives a target for health systems to strive for to track improvements that will move them into a better position against their competition, but even more so, improve their patient experience.

Artera Harmony customers can view their Patient Engagement performance compared to their peer group on four key benchmarks.

• Patient Response Rate – Total patients reached that had a response 
• Appointment Reach Rate – Appointments that received at least one automated reminder
• Patient Confirmation Rate – Total appointments confirmed
• Patient No-Show Rate – Total number of patient no-shows

Each peer group has an associated benchmark for the areas above, meaning not all peer groups perform the same therefore, it’s not appropriate to use a single benchmark. Each organization is assigned to a group which is either the top or bottom 50% based on total appointment volume. The benchmark performance is calculated based on a variety of automated outreaches performed by Artera Harmony within a defined timeframe.

In one example when evaluating the Academic cohort over fourteen days, we could see that performance varied where one health system performed significantly better against 3 out of 4 metrics compared to another who performed below, at varying degrees, all four of the benchmarks.

You Can’t Fix What You Can’t See

While it’s easy to send communications to patients, doing it well is a skill that many healthcare organizations are still aspiring to achieve – it’s extremely challenging to fix what you can’t see. Data is pivotal in helping many types of companies optimize their performance every day. It helps software companies improve their products for their users, it helps manufacturing companies reduce errors in their assembly lines and it helps marketers with insight into what messages are resonating with their customers.  

Patient Communications within Healthcare should be no different. The data provided by these new dashboards can inform providers on how they can do better for their patients. After all, as humans, we respond to calls to action, but we respond best when they are timely, in the context of our situation, and deliver a positive outcome when engaged. The No-Shows Recovery Dashboard and the Patient Engagement Benchmark Dashboard further expand our robust analytics by giving providers new insight that can not only help teams pinpoint areas of improvement to meet or exceed the benchmark in patient engagement but can also improve their outreach performance, no-show rates and their bottom line. 

To learn more, check out our Analytics Page.

The post New Artera Harmony Dashboards Uncover Insights To Improve Patient Engagement appeared first on Artera.

Meet the Team: Artera Data Insights 

As VP of Data at Artera, I’m responsible for constructing a highly scalable data environment to empower top-notch patient experiences – and I certainly couldn’t do this without a core part of the data team: Artera Data Insights. 

We’re passionate about leveraging the latest advancements in conversational AI, NLU and ML to reduce staff workload, improve health equity and automate delivery of actionable insights to turbo-charge the patient experience. We analyze billions of patient communications sent within the Artera platform on behalf of more than 700 healthcare systems and federal agencies, uncovering significant trends and insights we can then share with providers.   

Sitting at the intersection of tech and healthcare, our team is uniquely positioned to identify broader trends – such as staffing shortages or the need for technological assistance – and then uniquely apply them to patient communications. And, since Artera is the market leader in patient communications, we know that creating a successful patient communications plan is a critical aspect of how healthcare providers engage with their patients. Our data can help. 

We empower providers with the most reliable data and insights to strengthen their patient communication strategies. We look at our data with a keen, analytical eye, identifying what best practices exist, and how best can we advise and equip healthcare providers with trend data to improve their strategies and enhance patient engagement.

What Drives Effective Patient Communication? 

Providers today are actively looking for ways to optimize their communication strategy, including implementing new tactics to digitally interact with their patients. If they fail to keep up with today’s patient expectations, patients are willing to switch providers when their needs and expectations are not met – something that could be detrimental to providers’ bottom line. 

We want to help. This is why, to better understand what drives effective patient communication, our Data Insights team recently embarked on a mission to unravel the secrets of effective patient communication, conducting a messaging analysis in August of 2023. We performed extensive analysis of over two billion patient outreaches. 

As a result of our significant findings, we published a report: “Unlocking Patient Engagement: The Power of Advanced Communication Approaches,” which explores the following questions:

• What are the components of effective patient communication? 
• Which messages deliver high levels of patient engagement? 
• What communication best practices should providers deploy to meet patients’ communication expectations?  

The results were quite substantial and I was fascinated by a few of our findings – I hope you’re all just as excited about this research as I am. One of the insights I found most exhilarating was the type of phone number patients most respond to when comparing short code vs. long code numbers. What we found was a significant uptick in patient response rates from messages delivered via long code vs. short code – a 79 percent difference (long code = 70.5 percent response rate vs. short code = 39.3 percent). Based on the data, we can deduce that individuals’ familiarity and frequent use of long code numbers for their personal communications can create a sense of trust and legitimacy with health systems, inspiring patients to engage more frequently. 

Something else we discovered? Approximately 17 percent of patients still rely solely on landlines for their communication, rendering them unable to receive text messages. This means that despite the digital revolution, there remains a critical need for providers to enable multiple communication channels for their patients beyond just SMS/text, including email and IVR/voice, to ensure accessibility for all patients. If providers don’t offer multiple channels, they may be missing a number of patients in their outreach. 

While this is merely a sneak peek into our full report, the findings demonstrate that a personalized, patient-centric approach to communications is key to driving patient engagement. To dive deeper into the other components, strategies, and best practices that can reshape patient engagement and drive success, please download our full white paper here. 

What’s Next for Artera Data Insights 

We’re optimistic that our recent findings will take providers’ patient communication strategies to the next level and we encourage you all to make the enhancements aligned with our data. As for what’s next for Artera’s Data Insights team? We’re excited to continue uncovering even more insights and welcome your ideas or suggestions for further data discovery. If you have a suggestion, please get in touch with me here.

The post Advanced Communication to Unlock Patient Engagement appeared first on Artera.

Today, we’re excited to share that we are empowering our customers to explore their data, on their time, without requiring engagement from Artera. Our customers have indicated that they love the dashboards and reports that are available to them: in fact, 100% of enterprise organizations that have Analytics Plus utilize it every month. However, there are times when they also want to manipulate the data for deeper insights or present it differently than the default views that we provide. Our new Self Service capability within Analytics Plus provides the flexibility to explore, understand and develop custom analyses for their specific needs. 

As healthcare organizations become increasingly invested in technology and digital solutions, providers are seeking opportunities to leverage their data to improve patient engagement and experiences – major contributing factors to driving business results. What’s more, direct access to data and self service functionalities can help health systems solve operational and strategic challenges, fueling efficiencies and operational excellence across an entire organization.

What does data mean to you? 

Let’s face it: data can be confusing and complex. If you’re familiar with the healthcare landscape, you know that data is a diverse, overwhelming beast that is unlike data in any other industry. 

Layer in numerous vendors, platforms, and EHRs into the mix, and your data explodes into a never-ending collection of facts and statistics, likely leaving you with many questions. Unfortunately today many solutions also require you to contact the vendor for customized reports and analysis, leaving you to guess, wait, and hope the result will answer your questions.

And data alone does not provide much value. In fact, data without action is quite meaningless. So while you may have a plethora of numbers and statistics, it’s all about how you’re utilizing them that truly matters. 

Health systems are waking up to this realization and recognizing the need for a sound data strategy to drive real change across their organization. This includes utilizing self service analytics and empowering end users to dive into their data, answer their own questions, act on their answers, and drive efficiencies across their organization. 

So, if you’re someone in the industry working with a patient communication platform, some – or most – of these questions have likely crossed your mind: 

• How do I develop insights from the data we have available?
• How do I access data from my tools?
• How can I understand what this data means in the greater context of my organization?
• How do I understand how my patient communication tool is delivering value?
• How do I optimize the way we use our patient communication tools and other technologies?

Do More With Your Data: Artera Analytics Plus + Self Service Analytics

We’re here to help. Whether you’re interested in understanding how your tools are creating an impact across your organization and the patient experience or you’re the one responsible for reporting on the impact and manipulating data to achieve goals, you’re likely interested in gaining greater access to your data. 

With Artera, healthcare organizations who use our patient communications platform receive advanced analytics that elevate reporting capabilities, power unique insights, and improve data value and transparency. Specifically, Artera Analytics Plus with newly added Self Service functionality empowers users with the ability to independently explore, understand, and develop unique insights from their patient engagement data. 

While other analytics tools simply aggregate across their customers, Artera allows you to make data-driven decisions with complete access to the data collected within your platform instance across all user skill sets. 

Use Analytics Plus with Self Service Analytics to get started quickly with predefined reports, then customize them to meet your specific business needs. Create, modify, filter, and save edits to over 30 existing dashboards and reports to track key business metrics with precision and access a creative space to develop custom reports that you can share across your organization or with the customer support team to optimize operations. 

Elevate Reporting Capabilities  

Independently extract key metrics from larger dashboards and reports to maximize impact and quickly access what is most important to your organization. Develop your own personalized reports by modifying and saving existing reports or building your own. 

Here are a few ways you can better understand your patient engagement data with Analytics Plus and Self Service Analytics:

• Modify reports like Link Clickthrough Rate to understand rates of patient engagement with outbound information
• Understand which practices receive the highest volume of patient messages with the Inbound Message Volume report
• Track patient satisfaction over time with the PES Results report

Power Unique Insights

Leverage customizable reporting for deeper information and support data-driven decision making. Tailor data outputs on-demand to align with business needs.

Here are a few ways you can further develop data-driven solutions to critical pain points within your organization: 

• Dive into the Campaign Effectiveness dashboard to A/B test campaign messages to develop content that generates higher response rates with key demographics
• Drill down into the Inbound Keyword Automation report to develop new automations for common patient inquiries to save staff time
• Analyze the No Show Trends dashboard for insights into effectively reducing patient no shows

Improve Data Value & Transparency

With Analytics Plus and Self Service Analytics, explore areas for growth with full control over your own data from across the organization. Access data across the entire platform, build a collaborative data environment across teams and independently craft datasets with the support of a built-in data dictionary. You can even retain your data with available download options.

Here are a few ways you can enhance your data exploration: 

• Utilize the Campaign Delivery report to explore how effective outreach efforts are at reaching different patients
• Confirm administrative information is up to date with the Practice and Location Information look
• Review the Executive Dashboard for snapshots of organizational health and dive deeper on specific metrics

How one Artera customer utilizes Analytics Plus with Added Self Service Functionality

Data insights provide value to organizations of all sizes and data capabilities. For one Artera customer, Esperanza Health Centers – a Chicago-based Federally Qualified Health Center –  data is a significant piece of the patient communications puzzle. In fact, they have an analyst dedicated to data and outcomes, who uses Artera Analytics Plus on a regular basis to improve their patient communication strategy. 

As an Analytics Plus and Self Service Analytics user, Esperanza now has unlimited access to their data where they can “get more thorough details” and obtain the full picture as they continue to refine their patient engagement strategy. 

One example of this is how Esperanza leveraged an existing Artera Analytics Plus dashboard and modified it using  Self Service Analytics to unlock powerful insights that uncovered different response rates and engagement to their content testing. Furthermore, they were able to bypass the arduous step of pulling in data from an external EHR system and could simply complete their analysis within Artera.

More specifically, they used A/B testing to optimize campaign content and messaging. By  looking at generic vs. personalized messages, short vs. long messages, and messages with links vs. those without they could create a hypothesis on which might be the best approach and then prove the results using data contained within Artera. Collaborating with their quality department, they uncovered that for patients who needed a specific screening, it was most helpful to send a text with a more personalized note, including the first name of the patient. This ultimately helped them optimize their campaign content and increase response rates across this population. 

“Building trust with our patients always begins with clear, accessible communications,” said Gabriela Chavez, health data analyst at Esperanza Health Centers. “Ensuring that those communications are effectively driving higher quality, better outcomes, and lower cost requires a comprehensive analytics tool like Self Service Analytics. Its capabilities are allowing us to gather critical information about our campaigns, identify steps to improve their performance, and ensure that specific populations are receiving timely and appropriate care.”

Want to learn more? Download our infographic here or check out https://artera.io/self-service-analytics.

Enable Self Service Analytics under your Analytics Plus license to develop additional data insights. Please reach out to your Customer Experience Representative for more information. 

The post Empowering Providers to Unlock Greater Data Insights, Artera Rolls Out Self Service Analytics – A New Feature of Analytics Plus appeared first on Artera.