What Is Patient Engagement Technology

Patient engagement technology refers to digital platforms and tools that enhance communication, collaboration, and interaction between patients and their healthcare providers. These solutions empower patients to play an active role in their healthcare journey, ultimately improving outcomes and satisfaction.

From AI-powered patient portals to mobile health apps, these technologies are widely used in hospitals, clinics, and physician offices. They simplify healthcare workflows, expand access to information, and support personalized, timely care.

Patient engagement technology also plays a critical role in helping healthcare providers stay competitive in an increasingly digital world. By enabling seamless and secure communication, these tools help organizations build trust, retain patients, and improve efficiency.

How Patient Engagement Technology Works

Modern patient engagement technology functions as a “digital front door” for healthcare organizations. It provides patients with a single, intuitive entry point to manage their care journey from beginning to end. This digital hub integrates various functions to create a seamless and cohesive experience.

The primary functions of this digital front door include:

Communication and Coordination

These tools facilitate secure, bidirectional communication between patients and providers. Features like HIPAA-compliant texting, AI-powered chatbots for instant answers, and virtual waiting rooms streamline interactions and ensure patients feel heard and supported. This establishes a reliable line of patient-provider communication.

Access to Information

EHR-connected patient portals and mobile apps give patients direct access to their health records, test results, and treatment plans. This transparency empowers them to be informed participants in their own care.

Self-Service and Convenience

Patient self-scheduling has become a cornerstone of modern healthcare, allowing individuals to book, reschedule, or cancel appointments online at their convenience. This is complemented by digital forms and automated intake and payment processes, which reduce administrative tasks and wait times.

Education and Support

Effective patient engagement strategies include providing timely and relevant information. Digital patient education campaigns can deliver pre-appointment instructions, post-procedure follow-ups, and chronic disease management tips directly to a patient’s preferred device and in their preferred language.

Personalization and Outreach

Not all patients are the same. Patient segmentation allows providers to tailor communication based on demographics, medical history, or communication preferences. Automated patient communication ensures this outreach is consistent and scalable, helping to close care gaps and encourage proactive care.

Monitoring and Tracking

For patients with chronic conditions, remote patient monitoring tools can transmit vital signs and other health data directly to their care team. This enables early intervention and continuous oversight, improving health outcomes.

Examples of Patient Engagement Technologies

Patient engagement platforms encompass a wide range of digital patient engagement tools. While some are standalone solutions, the most effective systems integrate these functions into a unified platform.

Here are some key patient engagement technologies:

Patient Portals and Mobile Health Apps

Secure online hubs where patients can access their medical records, communicate with their care team, request prescription refills, and view lab results.

Telehealth Platforms

Software that enables virtual consultations with providers through video or phone calls, expanding access to care regardless of a patient’s location.

AI-Powered Virtual Agents for Healthcare

Intelligent chatbots and voice assistants that can answer patient questions, help with scheduling, provide information, and triage inquiries 24/7.

Automated Appointment Reminders and Digital Scheduling

Systems that send automated patient appointment reminders via text, email, or voice call to reduce no-shows. Patient self-scheduling tools allow patients to book appointments online without staff intervention.

Remote Patient Monitoring Systems

Devices and applications that collect and transmit patient health data (e.g., blood pressure, glucose levels) to providers for continuous monitoring.

Digital Education and Support Tools

Platforms that deliver targeted educational content, such as videos, articles, and interactive guides, to help patients manage their conditions and prepare for procedures.

Benefits of Patient Engagement Technology

Implementing a robust patient engagement strategy delivers significant advantages for patients, providers, and healthcare organizations as a whole. These benefits extend beyond simple convenience, creating a tangible impact on care quality and operational success.

Improved Health Outcomes

When patients are active participants in their care, they are more likely to adhere to treatment plans and attend follow-up appointments. Proactive outreach helps close care gaps, leading to better management of chronic diseases and preventive care.

Enhanced Patient Satisfaction

A positive patient care experience is a key driver of loyalty. By offering convenient self-service tools and clear communication, organizations can improve patient satisfaction, which has many advantages, including higher retention rates.

Reduced Administrative Workload

Automation handles repetitive tasks like appointment reminders, intake, and scheduling. This frees up staff to focus on more complex, high-value patient interactions, reducing burnout and improving morale.

Increased Appointment Attendance and Patient Retention

Automated patient reminders are highly effective at reducing the patient no-show rate. A seamless and positive experience encourages patients to remain with a provider, preventing patient leakage.

Streamlined Workflows and Operational Efficiency

A unified patient communication infrastructure eliminates fragmented systems and manual processes. This streamlines everything from scheduling to billing, allowing practices to see patients more efficiently.

Stronger Provider-Patient Relationships

Consistent and accessible communication builds trust. When patients feel supported and informed, their relationship with their provider strengthens, leading to better collaboration and shared decision-making.

Common Challenges in Patient Engagement and How to Solve Them

Despite the clear benefits, healthcare organizations can face hurdles when implementing new patient engagement technologies. Addressing these challenges proactively is key to a successful deployment.

Low Technology Adoption

Patients may be hesitant to use new digital tools due to a lack of familiarity or trust.

The Solution? Choose a platform with a simple, user-friendly interface and provide patients with a Branded Messaging experience by including your logo, images, and information in the patient’s messaging app to enhance trust.

Fragmented Communication Systems

Using multiple, disconnected tools for different tasks creates a disjointed experience for both patients and staff.

The solution? Implement a unified platform that centralizes all patient communication. EHR integration is critical to ensure data flows seamlessly between systems, providing a single source of truth.

Language and Accessibility Barriers

A one-size-fits-all approach to communication can exclude non-English speakers or those with disabilities.

The Solution? Select a platform that offers robust multilingual patient communication capabilities. Ensure all digital tools meet accessibility standards so that every patient can engage effectively.

High No-Show Rates

Missed appointments disrupt schedules and result in lost revenue.

The solution? Deploy automated patient appointment reminders and offer easy patient self-scheduling options for rescheduling. AI agents can proactively reach out to unconfirmed patients to reduce no-shows even further.

Siloed Patient Data

When patient information is stored in different, unconnected systems, it is impossible to get a complete view of the patient journey.

The Solution? Prioritize patient communication systems with strong EHR integration and interoperability. This ensures data is consolidated, allowing for personalized outreach and better care coordination.

The Role of AI and Automation in Patient Engagement

Automation and artificial intelligence are changing patient engagement platforms. The evolution has moved from simple automated reminders to sophisticated AI-driven interactions that personalize the entire patient journey.

Initially, automation in patient engagement was limited to basic tasks like appointment reminders and mass messaging. Now, advanced AI has transformed these interactions into intelligent, responsive conversations. Modern AI agents for healthcare can manage complex dialogues and address detailed patient inquiries, personalizing the experience at every touchpoint.

Agentic AI in healthcare workflows have evolved immensely, guiding patients through everything from scheduling and intake to post-operative care. Instead of just responding to queries, agentic systems can proactively execute multi-step tasks. For example, Artera Flows Agents can manage referral workflows, handle pre-procedure prep, and conduct post-visit follow-ups without human intervention. This coordinated approach ensures no patient falls through the cracks.

Other key AI innovations include:

Voice AI and Multilingual Support

Voice AI for healthcare enables natural, conversational interactions over the phone, while advanced translation capabilities ensure communication is clear for every patient.

NextGen AI Solutions

These solutions use predictive personalization to anticipate patient needs and deliver relevant information at the right time.

AI-Powered Outreach

AI can identify patients who are overdue for preventive screenings or need chronic care management follow-ups, triggering automated outreach campaigns to close care gaps.

How Patient Engagement Technology Improves Outcomes

The ultimate goal of any healthcare technology is to improve patient outcomes. Patient engagement software achieves this in several measurable ways.

Predictive analytics can identify at-risk patient populations, allowing providers to intervene before a health issue escalates. For example, an AI-driven solution can flag patients with a high probability of missing a critical follow-up appointment, enabling staff to provide extra support. Automated outreach ensures patients adhere to medication schedules and treatment plans, which is crucial for managing chronic conditions.

Real-time analytics and feedback loops provide immediate insight into the patient experience. Sentiment analysis, an AI-powered feature, can automatically classify incoming messages to detect patient frustration or confusion, allowing staff to prioritize these conversations and respond with empathy. This data-driven approach allows organizations to continuously refine their patient engagement strategies for maximum impact.

Selecting the Right Patient Engagement Platform

Choosing the right patient engagement technology is a critical decision. The ideal solution should not only meet your current needs but also scale with your organization as it grows.

Here are key factors to consider when evaluating different platforms:

Integration with Existing Systems and EHRs

The platform must integrate seamlessly with your Electronic Health Record (EHR) to ensure a unified data flow and a single source of truth for patient information.

HIPAA Compliance and Data Security

Ensure the platform adheres to all HIPAA regulations for protecting patient health information. Look for robust security measures, including end-to-end encryption for HIPAA compliant texting to patients.

Multilingual Patient Communication

To serve a diverse patient population, the platform must support communication in multiple languages across all channels (text, email, voice).

Customization and Scalability

The software should be flexible enough to be tailored to your specific workflows and scalable enough to support your organization’s future growth.

Real-Time Reporting and Analytics

Look for a platform with a powerful analytics dashboard that provides actionable insights into key metrics like no-show rates, patient satisfaction, and staff efficiency.

AI-Driven Support for Staff and Patients

Evaluate the platform’s AI capabilities. Does it offer intelligent virtual agents, predictive analytics, and workflow automation to reduce administrative burden?

Unified Patient Communication Infrastructure

Avoid fragmented solutions. A single, unified platform that centralizes all patient interactions is more efficient for staff and provides a better experience for patients.

Why Artera AI Is a Leader in Patient Engagement

Artera is a leader in patient engagement, offering a unified platform trusted by over 1,000 healthcare organizations nationwide. The platform aims to elevate healthcare to the highest standard of customer service by streamlining communication and personalizing the patient journey at scale.

Annually, Artera sends 2.2 billion messages, achieves a 94% patient response rate, and helps providers reduce no-show rates to under 3%. Our comprehensive product suite manages the entire patient journey and includes Artera Harmony for unified communication, AI Agents for intelligent automation, Intake & Payments, Scheduling, Care Navigator for post-discharge communication, and Pulse Outreach for targeted campaigns.

Through the Artera Marketplace, the platform ensures proven interoperability with leading EHR and third-party vendors, fostering a connected and efficient healthcare ecosystem. Artera’s mission is to empower healthcare providers to deliver a superior patient experience by combining powerful technology with a deep understanding of healthcare workflows.

Future of Patient Engagement Technology

The future of patient engagement technology is predictive, personalized, and profoundly integrated. AI will continue to be the driving force behind this evolution. We can expect to see hyper-personalization powered by real-time data, where communication is tailored to an individual’s specific needs and preferences at that exact moment.

Agentic AI will evolve from task-oriented assistants into coordinated care companions that support patients throughout their entire healthcare journey. Interoperability will deepen, breaking down the remaining data silos between different platforms and providers. Ultimately, these advancements will further champion digital equity and patient preference, ensuring that every patient has the tools and support they need to manage their health effectively.

FAQs About Patient Engagement Technology

What are examples of patient engagement technology?

Examples include patient portals, mobile health apps, telehealth platforms, automated appointment reminders, online self-scheduling software, AI-powered virtual agents, and remote patient monitoring devices. These tools work together to create a comprehensive digital experience.

How does AI improve patient engagement?

AI improves patient engagement by personalizing communication at scale, automating routine tasks, and providing 24/7 support. AI agents can answer patient questions instantly, guide them through scheduling and intake, and use predictive analytics to identify at-risk patients for proactive outreach.

How can organizations measure patient engagement success?

Success can be measured through key performance indicators (KPIs) such as patient satisfaction scores, portal adoption rates, appointment show rates, digital intake completion rates, patient response rates to communications, and improvements in specific health outcomes.

What is the ROI of patient engagement platforms?

The ROI is significant and multifaceted. It includes increased revenue from reduced no-shows and improved patient retention, enhanced operational efficiency from staff time savings, and long-term value from better patient health outcomes and higher patient satisfaction.

How secure is patient engagement technology?

Reputable patient engagement platforms are designed with robust security measures to protect sensitive patient data. This includes HIPAA compliance, end-to-end data encryption, secure data centers, and regular security audits to safeguard against unauthorized access.

What are the challenges in implementing these systems?

Common challenges include low patient or staff adoption, integration issues with existing EHRs, ensuring multilingual and accessible communication, and managing data from fragmented systems. These can be overcome by choosing a unified, user-friendly platform with strong integration capabilities.

The post Patient Engagement Technology: What It Is and Why You Need It appeared first on Artera.

To improve patient engagement today, effective digital patient communication is no longer optional—and directly affects loyalty, outcomes and revenue. Many providers have taken the first steps by incorporating text messaging into their patient outreach strategies. However, research from our new report, “Patient Engagement Today: Key Trends Shaping Patient-Provider Communication,” confirms that telemarketing, spam or fraudulent SMS messages from unverified numbers can overwhelm patients, causing them to disengage or miss messages they truly do want to read. Additionally, automated texts with defined responses like “yes” or “1” are not cutting it today.

Our takeaway: automated text messaging via short-codes (providing limited responses) is falling short, frustrating patients and creating communication barriers in healthcare. Small, meaningful changes you make to patient-provider communication today can dramatically improve patient experience, engagement and care outcomes. Let’s talk about it.

The Promise of Healthcare Text Messaging

Texting holds immense potential to transform patient communication and engagement. By providing timely information, updates and personalized post-visit care, it can improve appointment adherence, medication compliance and overall health outcomes. Text messaging offers a simple, accessible way to bridge the gap between healthcare providers and patients, ensuring important information is delivered directly to their fingertips. As a cost-effective and efficient tool, it empowers patients to stay informed and connected, fostering better relationships and trust with their care teams.

Overall, it’s a simple, efficient and great way to connect with busy patients. After all, research from our new report, “Patient Engagement Today,” shows that 82% of patients find value in texting their healthcare providers.

After further research, however, we found that not all text messages are created equal – and some are driving patient frustration and even communication barriers in healthcare.

Spam & Fraudulent Messaging Are on the Rise (Cue the Patient Frustration!)

With the rise in fraudulent and spam messages, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for patients to distinguish legitimate communication. As a result, many are missing important messages simply because they don’t recognize the sender. For healthcare providers, this poses a significant challenge: when messages come from unfamiliar or inconsistent numbers, patients are more likely to overlook them—even when the information is timely and essential.

According to our new report, “Patient Engagement Today,” most patients (71%) report an increase in text messages from unfamiliar numbers, which often seem like scams. Among them, 87% say they are less likely to read messages from numbers they don’t immediately recognize.

This growing trend is fueled by businesses increasingly relying on “short-codes” — five- or six-digit numbers — to communicate with patients, instead of traditional 10-digit phone numbers. Short-codes have become the status quo in healthcare (among many other industries). While these texts might seem harmless – and like a logical solution for providers – they’re alienating patients due to several key issues.

Approximately three-quarters (76%) of patients say they’ve noticed the volume of short-code text messages increasing over the last five years, which is leading to frustration. Of that group:

• 89% of patients find them disruptive 

• 65% of patients admit they often pay less attention to them

• 56% of those who pay less attention to them report missing important information 

These numbers are significant and the limitations don’t just frustrate patients; they actively harm care delivery as patients often ignore or dismiss short-code messages, leading to missed appointments, unpaid bills and incomplete care plans.

But patients are frustrated with more than just the short-code text message avalanche. It’s the one-way or automated, limited responses that are truly driving communication barriers in healthcare.

How You (Text) Message Matters

As patient expectations evolve, so must the tools healthcare providers use to engage them.

The days of transactional Y or N text exchanges are gone, and patients are demanding more from their providers. Based on our new report, most patients (55%) reported instances of frustration when they could only respond to automated texts with set answers like “yes” or “1”. 

Of that group, 74% said they ended up having to call their provider’s office anyway, defeating the whole purpose behind text messaging of improving the patient experience and reducing staff burden. 

Furthermore, three-quarters (76%) of patients believe the ability to initiate a conversation with their provider’s office via text about any topic would improve their healthcare experience. This means that providers that prioritize conversational texting approaches tailored to patients’ needs will stand out in delivering a better experience.

According to Deloitte research, hospitals with “high patient-reported experience” scores have higher profitability (3-4% higher net margin). 

Providers Must Move Beyond Basic Texting to Foster Engagement and Strengthen Trust

For providers, these insights are substantial, giving clear guidance on how to move forward: conversational, two-way texting from a recognizable 10-digit phone number that can be programmed into patients’ phones will help break through the noise of spam and fraudulent messaging and ease patient frustration around automated, pre-defined text messages. By embracing AI-powered patient engagement strategies, providers will be able to meaningfully engage with patients while improving staff workload.

Nearly nine in 10 (89%) of patients are more likely to engage if they receive a text from their provider with the same 10-digit phone number. In addition:

By evolving beyond impersonal short-codes and embracing 10-digit phone numbers that patients recognize and trust, providers can significantly enhance engagement and rebuild confidence in text messaging as a reliable communication channel. Prioritizing familiarity and personalization not only strengthens the provider-patient relationship but also ensures critical information is delivered, received and acted upon—improving both patient outcomes, operational efficiency and provider revenue. 

Why Patient Communication Matters More Than Ever

Poor communication isn’t just a mild inconvenience. It has tangible consequences for patient health and provider success.

• Declining Health Outcomes: Patients often skip or delay appointments due to communication frustrations. More than 47% of patients report avoiding scheduling altogether when they struggle to connect with their providers, with 61% saying these delays negatively impacted their health.
• Patient Dissatisfaction and Loyalty Risks: Today’s patients expect the same seamless, personalized experiences they receive in other industries like retail or banking. A full 63% of patients say they are willing to switch providers over poor communication experiences—a percentage that rises significantly among younger, tech-savvy individuals.
• Provider Revenue at Stake: Missed appointments, unpaid bills, and poor engagement all impact a provider’s bottom line. For example, 30% of patients admit that difficulties communicating by text have led to forgotten or missed bill payments—88% of whom say better communication could have solved the issue.

AI-powered communication (including virtual agents, both voice and text) is no longer a minor operational need; it is a strategic necessity for quality care and maintaining a competitive edge.

Download the full report here to learn more about how you can enhance your patient engagement using AI-powered strategies that work.

About the Report:

The report surveyed 1,000+ U.S. patients who are responsible for their own healthcare decisions and have engaged with the healthcare system over the last 12 months. All respondents reported they have communicated with a healthcare provider via text messaging. 

The post Not All Text Messages Are Created Equal (Some Are Driving Communication Barriers in Healthcare) appeared first on Artera.

With cost transparency, patient frustration can not only be alleviated but also patient retention and revenue cycle management are optimized.

This blog explores why cost transparency is making waves, how it can help retain patients and how solutions like Artera Intake & Payments make it easier for providers to offer visibility into costs and streamline payments for better revenue capture.

The Problem with Hidden Healthcare Costs

It’s no secret that lack of price transparency has been a long-standing issue in the healthcare industry. According to research, 40% of patients are likely to cancel or delay care if they don’t receive a clear cost estimate beforehand. Additionally, nearly half claim they would consider switching providers for better upfront cost information.

Here’s why hidden costs cause friction for both patients and providers:

• Patient Frustration:
  • No one likes financial surprises. Patients often don’t know the full financial responsibility for services until after receiving care, leading to missed payments, lost trust and even delays in scheduling.
• Revenue Cycle Bottlenecks:
  • Hidden costs increase the chances of claim denials and slow down payments. Providers often rely on time-consuming follow-ups for collections, adding unnecessary administrative burdens.
• Compliance Challenges:
  • Regulations like the No Surprises Act emphasize the need for clear cost disclosures, penalizing organizations that fail to offer estimates.

Patients increasingly want a consumer-like experience when interacting with healthcare providers—just as they’re accustomed to in other industries. That’s where healthcare cost transparency becomes a breakthrough for providers.

How Cost Transparency Builds Patient Retention

Providing clear, upfront pricing isn’t just a compliance measure—it’s a competitive advantage. Transparent pricing fosters trust and encourages patients to remain loyal even in the face of rising costs. Here’s how it boosts retention:

1. Earns Trust Through Clarity

Patients are more likely to choose providers that deliver clear, realistic estimates of out-of-pocket costs before services are rendered. Transparent communication demonstrates that a provider values the patient’s time and finances, building lasting trust.

2. Improves Patient Satisfaction

A 2024 study suggests that 94% of Americans value knowing their costs upfront. Cost transparency significantly reduces anxiety surrounding unexpected bills. This leads to a more positive overall experience, which can translate into repeat visits and word-of-mouth referrals.

3. Lowers Appointment Cancellations

When patients are uncertain about the financial implications of healthcare services, it often results in delays or outright cancellations. By offering visibility into costs, providers can reduce missed appointments and improve operational efficiency.

4. Enhances Payment Flexibility

Transparency helps patients understand their financial responsibilities and enables them to plan payments accordingly. This creates a smoother billing process, increasing the likelihood of on-time payments and reducing reliance on collections.

By committing to cost transparency, healthcare organizations can fundamentally alter the patient-provider relationship, elevating patient loyalty and positioning themselves as trusted healthcare partners.

Some patients say they’ve been able to make price transparency work for them. Theresa Schmotzer, 50, of Goodyear, Arizona, said she used hospital price data to save nearly $3,000 on outpatient surgery to have a fibroid removed in 2024. Schmotzer, who has health insurance, said the hospital first told her she would owe $3,700 for the procedure and wanted the payment upfront. But she was skeptical. The morning of the surgery, Schmotzer found a spreadsheet online at PatientRightsAdvocate.org that included different prices paid by insurers, including hers. The reported price for the procedure was closer to $700, rather than the $3,700 she was first told.

Artera Intake & Payments Brings Cost Transparency to Life

Solutions like Artera Intake & Payments make it easier than ever for providers to implement cost transparency at every step of the patient’s care cycle. This modern platform not only improves patient satisfaction but also enables organizations to optimize revenue capture. Here’s how it works:

Pre-Visit Cost Transparency

Before the patient even visits the clinic, Artera helps secure accurate insurance verification and clear cost estimates through automated digital tools. This allows patients to fully understand their co-pays, deductibles and payment responsibilities upfront, so there are no surprises when it’s time to pay.

With features like automated reminders and pre-payment options, healthcare organizations can start the revenue capture process earlier, reducing the likelihood of payment delays.

Real-Time Cost Visibility During the Visit

At the point of care, Artera ensures continued cost transparency with real-time insurance verification and eligibility checks. Patients can receive updated cost information on-site and have the flexibility to make payments digitally—even completing unfinished pre-appointment forms.

This seamless integration of payment systems allows staff to focus on providing care rather than spending precious time resolving billing questions.

Post-Visit Billing Transparency

After the visit, Artera makes it simple for patients to pay remaining balances with automated billing reminders sent via email or text message. This ensures that patients have all the necessary details to make payments conveniently, improving payment completion rates.

Key benefits for healthcare providers include:

• Reduced Claim Denials:
  • Accurate insurance verification minimizes the risk of payment delays due to inaccurate coding or eligibility issues.
• Faster Revenue Capture:
  • With payment collection moved upstream, organizations can significantly shorten their revenue cycle timelines.
• Enhanced Patient Loyalty:
  • Transparent communication fosters trust, ensuring that patients return for future care rather than choosing competitors.

Real-World Impact of Artera Intake & Payments

• 85% shorter check-in times compared to manual paper forms, enabling patients to focus on their care rather than the administrative hassle.
• 87% of patients opt to save cards on file for easy automated payments, simplifying the post-visit billing process.
• $500k saved by one customer due to reductions in overdue collections—a clear example of translating cost transparency into a financial advantage.

Deliver Cost Transparency to See the Change

Healthcare is rapidly evolving to meet the expectations of today’s consumers. Patients increasingly demand clarity, speed and ease when it comes to their interactions with providers. Cost transparency isn’t just a feature; it’s a necessity for any organization looking to thrive in a competitive healthcare landscape.

By adopting tools like Artera Intake & Payments, healthcare providers can:

• Capture more revenue earlier in the patient care process, improving cash flow and reducing time lost to collections.
• Build deeper patient trust by providing upfront cost estimates that improve engagement and satisfaction.
• Empower their staff with modern digital tools that reduce inefficiencies in insurance verification, payments, and billing.

Actionable Steps for Providers

Your next step is critical but simple. Patients are actively seeking consumer-friendly healthcare experiences, and cost transparency ranks high on their list of priorities.

Explore how Artera Intake & Payments can transform your organization’s approach to cost transparency, patient retention and revenue capture. Book a demo today and experience the future of patient engagement.

The post How Cost Transparency Enhances Patient Retention and Boosts Revenue Capture appeared first on Artera.

Improving maternal care is a critical priority for the U.S. healthcare system today – and rightfully so. According to a report from the Commonwealth Fund, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rates among 11 developed countries. In large part, this is due to a lack of maternal care providers and no guaranteed access to home visits or paid parental leave following birth. 

“Despite all that we spend on health care and all the advancements in medicine, our rates in maternal morbidity and mortality are actually going up,” said Dr. Neema Stephens, National Medical Director for Health Equity at Cigna, in a previous podcast for Becker’s Hospital Review. 

What’s more, about 36% of all US counties are considered “maternity care deserts,” meaning there are no obstetric hospitals, birth centers, or obstetric providers – and the number of counties where this is the reality seems to be growing, according to a new report. So, what does this amount to? Approximately 2.2 million women are living in maternity care deserts and 150,000 babies are being born there – all of whom face a higher risk of poor health outcomes, including death. 

The numbers are staggering. While a system-wide approach will be critical in addressing the maternal health crisis, patient communication can help close such large maternal health care gaps. 

Four in five maternal deaths are preventable

Another striking statistic is 84% of maternal deaths between 2017 and 2019 were due to preventable causes, according to a CDC report. Of the 1,018 reported deaths, 539 (53%) of them occurred well after women left the hospital, between seven days and a year after delivery. This highlights the “need for quality improvement initiatives in states, hospitals, and communities that ensure all people who are pregnant or postpartum get the right care at the right time,” said Wanda Barfield, M.D., M.P.H., Director of CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Mental health conditions – deaths by suicide or overdose – were the top underlying cause of postpartum death, followed by extreme bleeding, or hemorrhage. White and Hispanic women were most likely to die from suicide or drug overdose, while cardiac and coronary conditions were the leading cause of death for Black women. According to the CDC report, both conditions occur disproportionately later in the postpartum period.

According to the CDC, other leading factors in maternal deaths are clinician, facility, and systems factors. Some of these include inadequate training, missed or delayed complications diagnosis, poor communication, and a lack of clinician coordination. 

Ultimately, the data underscores various weaknesses in the current maternal care system: policies that strip women of coverage shortly after giving birth, late postnatal checkups, lack of follow-up care or postpartum depression screenings, and much more. Those who face the brunt of such issues? Minority women.

Maternal care disparities: a grim reality in the U.S. 

Politically, socially, and economically, the discussion around maternal care and poor outcomes for minority populations has been a growing concern. In fact, deep inequities across race, socioeconomic status, and geography are major factors when it comes to maternal mortality. Black mothers – who are three times more likely to die than white mothers from pregnancy complications – made up nearly a third of the deaths reported in the recent CDC analysis. In fact, in 2023, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, more than three times higher than the rate for White women (14.5 per 100,000).

Researchers have found that access to care, access to comprehensive insurance coverage, and inequities in patient-provider relationships (such as structural racism or implicit bias) are widely believed to drive these disparities. For example, a recent 2024 study found that Black mothers were 25% more likely to undergo unnecessary cesarean sections compared to white mothers, even after controlling for various factors. ​

Social determinants such as access to care, transportation, or technology, as well as employment or living environment, were also significantly heightened during the pandemic, exacerbating the effects even further. This resulted in unequal access to maternal care and an increase in maternal deaths for those in underserved communities. 

To take it a step further, disparities can really boil down to timely patient access to maternal care, according to a 2022 survey from What To Expect, a pregnancy patient education company. Not only are black women more likely than white women to have delayed prenatal appointments, but they are also three times more likely to have their first appointment at 16 weeks or later and are getting their ultrasounds much later – both critical pieces of maternal care. 

The next step to addressing maternal mortality and health disparities 

While these stats are quite sobering, the data presents a real opportunity to address the underlying issues around maternal mortality and health disparities. Currently, there are some promising efforts and steps being taken, however, a system-wide approach will be needed to tackle the many risk factors that impact maternal care. Health systems have the opportunity to address this further by prioritizing patient communication to enable accessible, high-quality, equitable care for all patients regardless of social factors.

Artera is prepared to support organizations looking to improve maternal care by maximizing patient communication to better engage patients across their entire maternal health journey: from prenatal to postnatal and beyond. 

How Artera can help improve maternal care outcomes

While there are no silver bullets when it comes to addressing the maternal care crisis, patient communication can significantly help to lessen the problem. The Artera platform can be an asset to close care gaps and increase pregnant patients’ access to services and information through automated recall messages, referrals, conversational messaging, and community outreach. 

Recall messaging and referrals ensure patients receive additional outreach and timely touchpoints to continue their care pathway, following up at critical intervals for birthing patients to engage with routine care. Organizations using Artera, such as UNC Health, have seen referral conversion rates increase by over 40%, meaning more patients are able to connect with the follow-up care they need when they need it most. 

Conversational messaging also gives these patients immediate and convenient connections with staff and providers for information when they need it, even after delivery. If they have any pressing questions, they are able to reach out directly to their provider for more information, making communication more accessible and efficient. Ideally, conversational messaging can help keep patients engaged throughout their entire maternal care journey – something that is frequently overlooked: “We tend to think about maternal mortality, or maternal issues, as a point in time or a moment in time for women…people need to understand more and more is that it is about the entire lifecycle of a woman, of her family, of everyone who touches that familial unit,” said Dr. Zenobia Brown, SVP of Population Health and Associate Chief Medical Officer at Northwell Health. 

Artera’s workflows are just one type of tool that can enable the action needed to support maternal care long-term. Equipping organizations with effective patient outreach and making a change in other areas impacting care is how the healthcare system can collectively impact patient outcomes and help close gaps in maternal care. 

The post From prenatal to postnatal and beyond: How patient communication can close gaps in maternal care appeared first on Artera.

The Importance of Patient Engagement in Healthcare

Artera recently created “The Patient Engagement Playbook,” which offers six best practices for patient engagement to enable you to foster lasting connections with your patients that will ultimately lead to greater results for both your patients and your organization. The playbook will walk you through six critical steps to increase patient engagement – the fifth of which covers patient empowerment. 

But before we dive into the significance of patient power and empowerment, let’s define engaged patients.

Engaged patients are:

• Informed – They understand their health status and the recommended treatment.
• Heard – They communicate with their providers and participate in shared decision-making.
• Empowered – They believe they can change their health outcomes.
• Active – They take action on their health based on personal learnings and overall understanding. 

Although engaging patients – and keeping them engaged – can be challenging, it is a vital process for attracting and retaining them. Effectively engaging patients in their care is essential to improving health outcomes and staff efficiency, increasing patient satisfaction, and reducing costs while driving revenue. 

“The Patient Engagement Playbook” discusses how greater patient engagement can: 

Improve health outcomes: Strong patient engagement increases adherence to treatment regimen recommendations among patients, which in turn leads to fewer complications and re-hospitalizations. Several U.S. studies recently reported coordinated care trials that actively engaged patients with chronic disease resulted in significant mortality reductions compared to a control group who merely took appropriate medications. The studies suggest chronically ill patients who are engaged in their care live longer than unengaged peers who otherwise receive similar treatment, meaning health and well-being are fostered by engaged and activated patients. [1, 2, 3] 

Enhance staff efficiency: Patient engagement strategies can help reduce front-end staff workload by reducing time spent on phone calls which take up a significant portion of time and can lead to support staff burnout. With more valuable time back, staff can spend more time on direct patient care. 

Increase patient satisfaction: Personalized and unique patient engagement enables patients to feel heard and seen and empowers them to make decisions about their care. This can enhance overall satisfaction, and facilitate longer-standing relationships with providers while improving patient experience measures. 

Reduce cost and drive revenue: Patient engagement directly contributes to outcomes affecting hospital costs and reimbursement for health systems. Executing effective patient engagement strategies also means better patient retention and referrals.

Patient Empowerment: Leveraging Technology for Better Health Outcomes

Research tells us that self-advocacy in healthcare is important for patients and providers alike. But self-advocacy can be challenging in today’s world. This is why it’s rather crucial to “partner with patients,” says Meg Aranow, SVP, Platform Evangelist at Artera. Opportunities where patients are “invited in” to share responsibilities with providers, such as providing detailed symptom descriptions, can really advance patient empowerment and lead to improved health outcomes. 

According to the World Health Organization, patient empowerment is “a process through which people gain greater control over decisions and actions affecting their health” and should be seen as both an individual and a community process. There are four core components that are considered fundamental to the process of patient empowerment: 

1. Understanding by the patient of his/her role
2. Acquisition by patients of sufficient knowledge to be able to engage with their provider
3. Patient skills 
4. The presence of a facilitating environment

To move this patient empowerment process forward, you must prioritize strategies that enable patients to get more involved and confident in their care journey and through technology, so they can become co-drivers of their own health. This is something that patients want too; in fact, American patients are demanding access to their health data so they can make informed decisions about where and how they receive care. 

Transparency is key here. In a study done by OpenNotes, an international movement advocating greater healthcare transparency, patients with immediate access to their provider’s appointment notes were sixty percent more likely to adhere to medications, a major concern with managing chronic conditions. This is particularly striking considering 120,000 deaths in the U.S. each year are attributed to a lack of medication adherence. This ultimately suggests when patients are armed with accurate and timely information, they are likely to make better choices for their health. 

Regardless of how patient empowerment unfolds, it has a similar result across the board: improved health outcomes. To get us thinking about specific patient empowerment strategies or methods, we’ve listed a few key ideas below.

1. Patient Education 

Roughly 50 to 60 percent of patients remember key information from recent inpatient stays, including their diagnosis and even changes in their medication regimens, researchers from the University of Michigan School of Medicine recently wrote in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. This means that nearly half of patients are forgetting treatment plans.

This is why wider use of patient education tools like patient-provider communication or patient portal access is critical. By providing patients with resources through these tools, it will help them better understand their condition, care plan, treatment, or prescription. Make sure the patient’s individual needs are addressed in any materials you give to them and remember that patients have different learning styles, so ask each patient how they like to consume information and adjust accordingly. Here are a few other tips: 

• Begin educating patients with every encounter from admission.
• Determine what the patient already knows and correct any misinformation.
• Provide comprehensive and detailed materials in layman’s terms. Utilize visual aids as often as possible.
• Question their understanding of the care, and plan for the next lesson.
• Ask the patient to tell you how they would explain (step-by-step) their disease or treatment to a loved one. If their family is present, have them summarize what they learned as well. 
• Ensure the patient understands the medications as you administer them. Make sure they understand how and when to refill medications.
• Provide patients with information about signs and symptoms of their condition that will require immediate attention.

Did you know? Research suggests patients who clearly comprehend their after-hospital care instructions have over 30 percent less chance of readmission compared to others.

There are many ways to deliver patient education, including one-on-one teaching, demonstrations, or illustrations. The use of the patient voice – or direct patient feedback – can also be extremely valuable when educating patients. Hearing patient insights, as opposed to that of a medical professional, may make the information more relatable – sometimes even emotional and everlasting.

Whatever material you choose to distribute, be sure to take advantage of existing technology – this not only makes materials more accessible but can help to provide customized resources for specific individuals. Furthermore, you can emphasize the importance of regular preventive screenings or incorporate screenings into their regular practice workflows. 

With evolving medical information about vaccines and other significant or timely healthcare matters, consumers are turning to their providers to get clear and accurate information. Enhancing your patient education process helps patients see you as a valuable source of health information, thus helping them remain engaged with their health and your practice specificially. Physicians and providers continue to offer a beacon of hope and support for many patients, with 94% of people saying their level of trust in their provider is the same or even more than it was before the pandemic. 

Above all, educating your patients empowers them to stay connected in their health, leading to improved outcomes. For example, Kaiser Permanente previously developed the Collaborative Cardiac Care Service pilot program that used technology and data to develop patient engagement through proactive patient outreach and education, as well as lifestyle adjustments, and effective medication management, among other tactics. 

The program achieved the following impressive results, according to a Healthcare IT News article:

• Patients have an 88 percent reduced risk of dying of a cardiac-related cause when enrolled within 90 days of a heart attack, compared to those not in the program;
• The number of patients meeting their cholesterol goal went from 26 percent to 73 percent; and
• The number of patients screened for cholesterol went from 55 percent to 97 percent.

2. Practice Shared Decision-Making

After you effectively educate your patients about their current health condition, medications, or treatment options and their potential side effects, you are able to engage in shared decision-making with them. According to the Patient Empowerment Network, shared decision-making is the “conversation that happens between patients and physicians to reach a healthcare choice together.” Praised across the industry for its clinical benefits and positive impact on patient engagement, shared decision-making is lauded as a driver of positive patient experience.

Since every patient is different and has their own specific goals regarding their health, it’s critical to discuss their unique wishes, intentions, or desired actions. Patients want this too: according to CVS Health’s Health Care Insights Study 2022, 80% of patients say it’s important their primary care providers be aware of their health goals. Peter Goldbach, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Health Dialog, summed it up nicely in an interview with PatientEngagementHIT.com: “The patient is the expert on the patient, so the provider needs that information. The provider is the expert on the disease, so the patient needs that information.”

Ultimately, when you better understand your patients’ health goals, you can help guide them toward making a choice in alignment with those goals. This is why the practice of shared decision-making, or collaborating with patients in selecting a certain care path, is critical in advancing patient empowerment and is a key component in patient-centered care. Patients who participate in this can feel like valued decision-makers of their own health, and according to a study published in the NCBI, these patients often report:

• higher levels of satisfaction
• have increased knowledge about conditions, tests, and treatment
• have more realistic expectations about benefits and harms 
• are more likely to adhere to screening, diagnostic, or treatment plans 
• have reduced decisional conflict and anxiety
• are less likely to receive tests or procedures which may be unnecessary 
• in some cases, have improved health outcomes 

According to the ONC, “Shared decision-making is a key component of patient-centered health care.” And with the shift toward patient-centered care today, it’s critical to be more intentional with your patients, asking them how they would like to receive care and in what ways they would like to be involved. This all ties back to stronger patient empowerment.

“Shared decision-making is not only conducive to reducing information asymmetry but also is ethically the right thing to do,” researcher Ming Tai-Seale, PhD, MPH, and his colleagues previously wrote in Health Affairs. “Systematic reviews of the preconditions for improving health care delivery have emphasized the importance of shared decision making as a mediator and moderator of health care quality.”

Implementing an effective and valuable shared decision-making strategy will ultimately hinge on strong patient outreach. Healthcare staff should rely heavily on their patient-provider communication skills to drive better patient education, decision-making, and patient empowerment.

When you enforce these practices, you can develop a deep understanding of your patient’s unique needs, which can strengthen the overall patient-provider relationship and enhance trust between the two. A collaborative partnership between patients and providers can lead to better medical decisions, educated and activated patients, and sustained patient interest in their ongoing care. This is why patient empowerment is so important.

Optimized patient engagement strategies are essential for healthcare providers looking to properly address patient needs, which have shifted dramatically as a result of healthcare consumerization and the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, providers need to consider the six strategies in The Patient Engagement Playbook to facilitate greater patient engagement, connection, and understanding. 

Conversational Messaging in Healthcare: Power to the Patient

The healthcare industry is undergoing a significant transformation, with conversational messaging at the forefront of this change. Conversational messaging in healthcare is not just about sending and receiving messages; it’s about creating a personalized, interactive communication channel between patients and providers. This shift is truly giving back the power to the patient.

One of the most significant advantages of conversational messaging is the enhanced understanding it provides to patients. Traditional methods of communication in healthcare, such as one-way automations or generic emails and texts, often leave patients feeling disconnected and uninformed. 

In contrast, conversational messaging drives a two-way, interactive dialogue, allowing patients to actively participate in their care. They can ask questions, seek clarifications, and receive instant feedback, ensuring they are well-informed at every step of their healthcare journey.

This interactive approach to communication empowers patients in several ways:

Improved Understanding of Healthcare Information
With conversational messaging, complex medical terms, test results, and treatment options are explained in a manner that’s easy for patients to understand. This clarity ensures that patients are not just passive recipients of care but active participants in their health decisions.

Swift Access to Test Results and Referrals
Waiting for test results can be anxiety-inducing for many patients. With conversational messaging, patients can receive their results faster and in a comprehensible format. Additionally, if a referral to a specialist is needed, the process becomes smoother and more efficient.

Empowered Decision Making
When patients have all the information they need at their fingertips, they can make better decisions about their care. Whether it’s choosing between treatment options or understanding the implications of a particular test result, conversational messaging ensures that patients have all the knowledge they need to make informed choices.

A recent Heartbeat Panel Recap by Artera highlighted the revolution brought about by conversational messaging in healthcare. It emphasized that this form of communication goes beyond traditional one-way communication, offering a more personalized and interactive patient-provider communication experience.

Conversational messaging is not just a technological advancement; it’s a paradigm shift in how healthcare is delivered and experienced. Placing the patient at the center of communication, truly gives back the power to the patient, enabling them to take a front-row, interactive, and powerful seat in their healthcare journey. This not only leads to better understanding and satisfaction but also paves the way for improved health outcomes.

The post Patient Empowerment | Why Patient Empowerment Is so Important appeared first on Artera.

• Importance of Patient Segmentation in Healthcare: Patient segmentation allows healthcare organizations to tailor care delivery and policies for different groups, helping identify high-risk, high-cost patients and customize interventions.
• Process of Patient Segmentation Analysis: The process involves creating patient groups based on shared characteristics, utilizing EHR data and analysis tools for effective segmentation. Health systems should set relevant goals for segmentation, such as improving outcomes and identifying high-performing providers.
• Benefits of Patient Segmentation: Not only does patient segmentation facilitate personalized care and targeted interventions but it improves health outcomes and reduces preventable spending.

Making sure your patients are engaged – one of two key elements driving patient experience – lays the foundation for stronger patient-provider relationships built on trust, empathy, and understanding. Positive relationships can help improve patient satisfaction and yield patient loyalty. And when a patient has a consistent, trusted source of healthcare, health outcomes can improve as well. 

The Patient Engagement Playbook

Artera recently created “The Patient Engagement Playbook,” which offers six best practices for patient engagement to enable you to foster lasting connections with your patients that will ultimately lead to greater results for both your patients and your organization. The playbook will walk you through six critical steps to increase patient engagement – the second of which covers patient segmentation analysis. 

But before we dive into patient segmentation, let’s define what engaged patients are:

• Informed – They understand their health status and the recommended treatment.
• Heard – They communicate with their providers and participate in shared decision-making.
• Empowered – They believe they can change their health outcomes.
• Active – They take action on their health based on personal learnings and overall understanding. 

Although engaging patients – and keeping them engaged – can be challenging, it is a vital process for attracting and retaining them. Effectively engaging patients in their care is essential to improving health outcomes and staff efficiency, increasing patient satisfaction, and reducing costs while driving revenue. 

“The Patient Engagement Playbook” discusses how greater patient engagement can: 

Improve health outcomes: Strong patient engagement increases adherence to treatment regimen recommendations among patients, which in turn leads to fewer complications and re-hospitalizations. Several U.S. studies recently reported coordinated care trials that actively engaged patients with chronic disease resulted in significant mortality reductions compared to a control group who merely took appropriate medications. The studies suggest chronically ill patients who are engaged in their care live longer than unengaged peers who otherwise receive similar treatment, meaning health and well-being are fostered by engaged and activated patients. [1, 2, 3] 

Enhance staff efficiency: Patient engagement strategies can help reduce front-end staff workload by reducing time spent on phone calls which take up a significant portion of time and can lead to support staff burnout. With more valuable time back, staff can spend more time on direct patient care. 

Increase patient satisfaction: Personalized and unique patient engagement enables patients to feel heard and seen and empowers them to make decisions about their care. This can enhance overall satisfaction, and facilitate longer-standing relationships with providers while improving patient experience measures. 

Reduce cost and drive revenue: Patient engagement directly contributes to outcomes affecting hospital costs and reimbursement for health systems. Executing effective patient engagement strategies also means better patient retention and referrals.

What is Patient Segmentation? 

If care is to be truly centered on the patient, the patient’s specific care needs and other characteristics must be addressed. While it can be challenging and quite expensive to meet the unique needs of every individual, programs can be developed for groups of patients with similar characteristics. This process refers to patient segmentation, also known as healthcare market segmentation. 

According to Health Affairs, “Patient Segmentation divides a patient population into distinct groups—each with specific needs, characteristics, or behaviors—to allow care delivery and policies to be tailored for these groups.”

Segmentation is both:

• Person-Centric – an individual is assigned to just one category based on their top health need (mutually exclusive).
• Hierarchical – there is a range of categories from the healthiest individuals to those with the highest clinical need. 

As a healthcare organization, it’s crucial to segment your patient populations as it will help you identify high-risk, high-cost patients, understand the complex care needs of various patient groups, and tailor care delivery or engagement efforts based on those specific needs. These distinct groups can be based on various factors, such as risk of morbidity or mortality, usually defined by a long-term condition, pain, discomfort, functional status, as well as demographics, predicted behavior, or social determinants of health. 

Addressing high-need, high-cost patients is increasingly pressing. Today, payers and providers alike are focused on finding more meaningful ways to deliver care for high-cost patients – those defined as having three or more chronic diseases and who account for a large portion of healthcare spending – to improve outcomes and decrease spending. To do so effectively, organizations must not only target patients on the basis of cost alone but must also consider their differing personal characteristics and needs. 

According to research by The Commonwealth Fund, high-need adults “average annual per-person spending on health care services and prescription medicines topped $21,000, nearly three times the average for adults with multiple chronic diseases only, and more than four times the average for all U.S. adults.” 

How to Perform a Patient Segmentation Analysis

Regardless of how it’s done, improved patient segmentation can improve quality metrics, target resources or communication strategies, reduce healthcare spending, and drive better outcomes. To help you get started with this process, we’ve outlined the four critical steps to conducting a patient segmentation analysis: 

1. Create patient segmentation groups

There is no one right way to create patient groups. In fact, the segmentation logic may be “completely data-driven” or “non-completely data driven,” depending on the types of data available and the specific goals of the health system. Using a data-driven approach, data from a variety of sources are pooled and statistical clustering is performed, whereas with a non-completely data driven approach, expert input is used for defining segmentation criteria. 

Ultimately, the first step in any patient segmentation analysis is to identify the shared patient characteristics and insights on patients’ behaviors and attitudes you want to collect. Determine the factors you need to create segment groups such as long-term conditions, demographics, age, geographic location, etc. Segmenting patients with complex needs into smaller, targeted subgroups can help further the focus on which interventions may be more effective for specific people. 

According to Researchers at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), segmentation based on patients’ “health prospects and priorities” enables an element of “patient-centeredness” – a goal that many providers increasingly strive to meet. What’s more, this approach provides the strongest potential for improved outcomes. When dividing patient populations into segments, the same researchers cited three “conditions” or useful principles to consider: 

1. The number of segments must be limited – each segment should represent a relatively substantial portion of the population
2. The segments need to include everyone meeting the segmentation criteria
3. The people in each segment should have similar healthcare needs, rhythms of needs, and priorities—and segments need to be sufficiently discriminatory

The ultimate goal of patient segmentation is to build behavioral profiles and collect meaningful data for each patient so providers exactly when, where, and how to reach them. By identifying patient needs and risks, health systems have the opportunity to design unique care plans or service packages, ensuring that each individual’s health needs are met effectively and efficiently. 

2. Use EHR data and patient segmentation analysis tools

With no one proven model, some health systems develop their own approaches to segmenting patients while others use big data to help divide a patient population into distinct groups, as previously stated. Despite varying models, data from administrative systems or well-designed electronic health records (EHRs) can be critical in helping to group patients into segments based on pre-determined factors. Ideally, the EHR has a comprehensive record of a patient’s healthcare journey from various sources such as hospital and clinic records, along with a history of patient communications to help identify which segment a patient fits. The EHR information, in conjuction with a patient segmentation analysis tool, may very well enable a triangulation of patient healthcare need variables from various sources. 

Health systems also have the choice of using various off-the-shelf patient segmentation data analysis tools. A sampling of available solutions include:

• The 3M Clinical Risk Groups (CRGs), a population classification system that uses inpatient and ambulatory diagnosis, procedure codes, pharmaceutical data, and functional health status to segment patients among 272 groups for detailed risk analysis. 
• The Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups System offers a patient segmentation tool, Patient Need Groups (PNGs), which groups individuals based on their specific health needs, individual characteristics, and behaviors. 
• The Community Assessment Risk Screen (CARS) is a simple method for identifying elderly patients who are at higher risk for health service use and increased costs by allocating patients to one of ten risk levels. 
• Decision Point Healthcare Solutions developed a set of patient personas that address behavioral patterns beyond age, gender, and disease state – a more modern approach viewing patients’ highly variable lives and behaviors as defining risk states. 

Another segmentation method health systems have employed is to use geographic data software called geographic information systems (GIS) to better understand patients’ needs. GIS tools can map around 10,000 data points regarding consumer behaviors, and provide information on healthcare spending per capita in a specific location. This data is combined with other information such as demographics, health services consumption, and disease prevalence information to create health profiles for specific communities.

For example, Loma Linda University Health wanted to find out why they consistently were getting large numbers of people brought to their hospital for 72-hour psychological holds. They used the Esri GIS software to map where the patients were coming from and discovered they were all from certain communities. This information prompted a further investigation which revealed that law enforcement in those neighborhoods needed to be appropriately trained on how to identify people who needed hospitalization and those who did not.

3. Identify patient segmentation analysis goals

Below is just a sampling of the many positive outcomes a patient segmentation analysis can provide. When setting up your patient segments and analysis framework, ensure you identify key goals and measures within your organization.

• Once specific groups are segmented and analyzed, interventions, care, and patient engagement strategies can be tailored to the particular needs of each population group.

• Segmentation can help health systems identify those patients who are high-cost and high-need, along with why they become this way. This can ultimately help limit preventable spending, for example, by cutting down on high-cost utilzation services such as emergency department (ED) visits. 

• Segmentation can help determine the return-on-investment (ROI) for specific populations by identifying which interventions or treatments work for patients with complex needs.

• Segmentation and analysis can help identify the providers in a health system who are the most effective and high-performing.

• Segmentation can improve quality metrics and drive improved health outcomes. Troy Long, M.D., executive consultant on population healthcare for PMG Healthcare Solutions, explains it as such: The top and the bottom of any set of quality benchmarks may sit 15 points apart. That “flat part of the curve” is where patient segmentation makes a difference, even just by “making a smidgen.” 

• Health systems adopting cohort-similarity approaches to patient segmentation can more readily incorporate a wide variety of patient-centered, whole-person approaches to care, such as focused outreach and communication, targeted digital programs, integrated practice units, and more. 

• The process of patient segmentation can help providers better understand the community they’re serving, gaining insights that can improve access to care and eliminate any barriers or roadblocks in the way. 

• Health systems may even use segmentation to make sure they’re not missing patients who don’t seek out care but may nonetheless be high-risk, ensuring no patients are left behind. 

4. Sharing patient segmentation analysis

Using segmentation, health policymakers are better able to match healthcare services to needs, thus improving whole population health outcomes and even reducing healthcare spend. Take a detailed look at how patient segmentation impacted your patient outcomes and system in general and make sure to document the progress. When these changes occur to fit a more personalized, strategic approach to care, it’s important to share the analysis more widely so others can learn from your processes. 

Another promising trend is the sharing of information – specifically social determinants of health – across communities. For example, The Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation (PCCI), a nonprofit that was spun off from Parkland Health & Hospital System, is building the Dallas Information Exchange Portal, a platform that will allow hospitals, clinics, homeless shelters, food aid groups, and other service organizations to share information about the social and economic needs of vulnerable patients. Ideally this will help inform providers of the various types of patients and social parameters within the community. 

Patient Segmentation Can Lead to More Personalized Care

Overall, with more clarity, understanding, and intentionality, comes focused opportunities for health improvement – especially for patients who may require more complex care management. If you could get ahead of an individual’s needs, and design and execute a care plan, you have the opportunity to hopefully keep them out of the hospital – saving time, money, and potentially, a life. 

“We want to understand what are the issues they face, what are the barriers that they face, who are they, where are they going, what’s happening to them. And we can use that information to drive strategy,” says Pete Knox, executive vice president at Bellin Health. 

For example, a 2019 study found that food insecurity – which can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions – costs the health system an additional $53 billion a year. By proactively identifying people living with, or at risk of, food insecurity, and then engaging with them early on, we could significantly reduce the health consequences that it causes, improving overall outcomes. 

As health system reform shifts from fee-for-service to value-based care models, the incentives to focus on and improve care for high-cost, high-need patients will only continue to grow. With no single proven model, however, health systems will need to get creative in terms of developing their own approaches to patient segmentation. What’s most important is to gain a deeper understanding of your patients and their behaviors so you can not only improve outcomes and advance personalized care but also reduce costs and identify areas of opportunity. 

Why Healthcare Market Segmentation is Critical in Today’s World

Healthcare market segmentation is essential in today’s rapidly evolving industry. By dividing the market into specific groups based on demographics, needs, behaviors, or preferences, healthcare providers and organizations can deliver more personalized care, improve patient outcomes, and enhance overall efficiency. Segmentation helps identify underserved populations, tailor communication strategies, and allocate resources more effectively. As patient expectations grow and competition increases, prioritizing market segmentation allows healthcare organizations to stay ahead by addressing unique needs and fostering stronger patient relationships.

Optimized patient engagement strategies are essential for healthcare providers looking to properly address patient needs, which have shifted dramatically as a result of healthcare consumerization and the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, providers need to consider the six strategies in The Patient Engagement Playbook to facilitate greater patient engagement, connection, and understanding.

The post Patient Segmentation: How – and Why – You Should Be Analyzing Your Patient Population Segments appeared first on Artera.

And, they deserve it. 

EVERY PERSON will become a patient at some point in their lifetime – you, me, and the physicians and nurses who will care for us. Our health is the most important part of our being and communication is a critical component to improving care adherence.

So in short: We deserve it. 

Unfortunately, the reality is that many patients still receive BASIC communication from their healthcare provider: robo texts, one-way messages with no personalization, limited response options, and more. 

At Artera, we believe patients deserve BETTER communications, not BASIC.

And if you’re ready to deliver a world-class communication experience to your patients, you’ll want to keep reading.  

Here are nine ways to go beyond basic texting to deliver better conversations and therefore, improve the patient experience and outcomes: 

#1: Go Beyond Basic (One-Way or Two-Way) Texting With Conversational Messaging 

It’s no surprise that more and more consumers are craving the simplicity, ease, and accessibility that texting can offer – and it’s clear healthcare leaders are taking note, as the industry now takes the lead for consumer SMS opt-ins in 2023 (55%). This is a notable increase from last year’s 49% – a 13% growth in healthcare-related opt-ins year over year.  

But the days of basic texting in healthcare are gone. Robo texting, push notifications, and entering “1 to confirm” or replying “Y or N” are a thing of the past. We now know patients not only want to interact with a live human to get their questions answered, if needed, but they also want to text in their own words or emojis and engage in dynamic, real conversations with their care team. 

Basic platforms that only support hard-coded “two-way” basic texting – with no NLU or live staff support – cannot live up to patient expectations today. So, if you know your patients aren’t basic, why would you treat them like they are by using basic texting? Basic patient messaging is robotic, predefined, and quite frankly – archaic. Your staff and your patients deserve an upgrade. 

Artera’s conversational messaging technology helps healthcare providers have better conversations with patients. It allows health systems to automate patient communications using natural language and AI, while also producing personalized interactions that help maintain the human touch – ensuring a beautiful balance between AI and human inclusion.  

Conversational messaging goes well beyond one-way automations and older two-way healthcare texting solutions, providing an experience similar to messaging friends or family – something that patients are looking for. For health systems, Artera reduces call volume and patient outreach with conversational messaging – among a number of other features – such as broadcast messaging, campaign messaging, AI-enabled texting, call-to-text, and language support. 

#2: Think Beyond Appointment Reminders

A good patient communication strategy isn’t just about appointment reminders – it’s about so much more: closing gaps in the patient journey, delivering workflows, and guaranteeing that patients convert. It’s also about automating processes and improving staff efficiency.

Our very own Meg Aranow, Platform Evangelist at Artera and former CIO at Boston Medical Center, believes that there is so much more opportunity to engage with a patient beyond appointment reminders: 

“Making sure patients come in for their visits – and are reminded at an appropriate cadence – is almost table stakes at this point. Now we’re going further and we’re starting to message patients after their visit to make sure that they’re doing the follow-up care, they’re refilling their prescriptions, and more – we can really start to see tangible outcomes if a patient is following through with their care now.” 

That being said, most basic platforms in the market today provide limited functionality – likely just appointment reminders – to reach patients. This not only feels transactional in nature but does nothing to enable deeper connections with your patients. So, why limit your workflow to just appointment reminders? 

The Artera platform goes well beyond just appointment reminders, supporting hundreds of workflows spanning the entire patient journey – everything from referrals to recalls, post-discharge, and more. This enables a more cohesive patient experience, engaging them across the entire care continuum – beyond just a single appointment instance.

#3: Minimize Message Fatigue by Integrating Vendors Across Your Tech Stack

Communication burnout, or “texting fatigue,” is a real thing. We all know how overwhelming digital communication and constant notifications can be – sometimes to the point where reading and responding all just seems like too much at once, so we ignore it. 

According to a 2020 report exploring the effects of information overload and online conversation dynamics, researchers found that “over-exposure to information can suppress the likelihood of response by overloading users.” It’s no wonder the average American has a whopping 47 unread text messages and over 1,600 unopened emails at a given time. 

For healthcare communications alone, this issue has spiraled out of control, with an abundance of technology systems, specialties, and providers who are all competing for attention from the same patients. Our research found that most health systems have over 11 digital health vendors that communicate independently with patients, leaving many patients feeling “over-messaged” and fatigued. 

The real issue here is too many texts from too many numbers and vendors, totally uncoordinated. This is the result of using basic platforms, or closed systems, that do not integrate with other vendors – and are each being managed by various departments within the health system, meaning there is limited-to-no awareness of competing communication workflows or messaging backlogs.

This is where Artera Harmony – our open platform – can deliver a more cohesive experience, orchestrate patient communication by integrating a hospital’s digital vendors, manage communication workflows from multiple stakeholders, and deliver communication to patients in a single unified and cohesive communication thread. This streamlined approach helps minimize message overload and consolidates various channels for personalized care delivery.

#4: Deliver Text Messages via Long Code 

Have you ever received a message from a random number, thought “Oh no, who is this? It’s probably spam,” and then immediately deleted it? We’ve all been there – and you may even be so inclined to go one step further and block the number, thinking you’re doing yourself a favor.

In reality, however, this could’ve very well been your healthcare provider texting you via a basic patient communication platform – one that sends communications from a 5-digit short code, not the hospital’s main line. Without that context, it’s easy to imagine just how many patients view these short-code messages as spam – a common mistake that ultimately lowers response rates significantly (short-code messages: 39.3% response rate).¹ But, as a provider, how will you engage these patients if they don’t know who you are? 

With the Artera platform, communications are sent via long code from the hospital-enabled phone number – a recognizable phone number that the patient may have even saved in their contact list. This not only means texts and calls don’t get ignored but it also improves overall response rates from patients (long code messages: 70.5% response rate).¹ 

#5: Deploy an Omnichannel Strategy 

As a patient, you deserve options, especially in terms of how you communicate with your healthcare provider. Let’s just say you don’t have a cellphone, or maybe you’re just not that into texting and prefer calling or emailing instead. While this may seem shocking to some in today’s world, nearly 1 out of 5 patients use landlines only (i.e. cannot receive text messages.)² This number may very well be more than that, too – in fact, one Artera customer in the Southern U.S. found that 35% of their patients were using landlines only.

Despite a significant portion of patients who use landlines only, some basic platforms only offer text messaging and do not have interactive voice response (IVR). What this means is that you cannot reach those patients with landlines – meaning you cannot reach a significant portion of your patient population. Are you comfortable not reaching these patients? If not, do you have Call Center resources to call those patients manually? 

With Artera, you don’t have to think through these challenges. As a complete omnichannel solution, Artera offers messaging in patients’ preferred channels, including Voice/IVR, email, or text – giving you the ability to reach and engage more patients on their preferred communications channel – even those with landlines.

#6: Personalize Your Messaging As Much as Possible

It’s likely that you’ve received impersonal text messages from a variety of industries before – mass texts that were shared with thousands of other people to try and get you to buy or attend something. And with no personalization or customization, the message just feels dull or spammy – like a robotic, transactional interaction.  

For providers using a basic platform, this is all they have to offer, as the workflows are hard-coded and offer limited customization – versions can not be created for specific patient cohorts, locations, providers, and event types. As a health system, are all of your departments and staff willing to use a unified, standard message for patients? How will you deliver a great experience and increase engagement when each patient receives a standard message regardless of their condition?

Artera offers tremendous, intuitive customization by location, event, provider workflows, and more. This means all of your various departments can create unique messages that resonate best with their unique patient population, leading to greater engagement. In fact, when communications like these are customized to the patient (e.g., patient name, location, and/or provider), there is a 24% increase in patient response rate.⁵ 

#7: Integrate Your Staff for Live Dialogue, When Needed

Imagine this: you’re busy at work and have limited time to look at your phone, but are texting an important question to your provider before an upcoming appointment. You end up getting back, “This line is not monitored.” You have two options: call in, likely wait on hold, and ask your question to staff, or – if you’re tight on time – you just forget about it and hope for the best – something that’s not only frustrating but could potentially be detrimental to your health. 

This is what happens when you use basic platforms that only support hard-coded “two-way” messaging and do not offer live staff support when patient inquiries stray. If patients are not able to seamlessly connect with live staff via text when necessary, it creates more hassle for the patient AND your call center. Think about it: Does your call center or front desk staff even have the resources to handle these extra calls that will come in as a result of unanswered texts? 

With the Artera platform, you get two great options to make this better for your patients. For those that ultimately choose to dial in, if time is of the essence, our call-to text feature can easily transfer them to a text-enabled line for fast response. In fact, one customer using call-to-text decreased call abandonment rates by 25% or nearly 1,000 calls per month. 

This response can be an automated prebuilt conversation or our staff console is available for live staff intervention when necessary – something that is used a tremendous amount. In fact, Artera’s staff console allowed health systems to engage 2.4 million unique patients⁴ via manual messages in a year. Without the console, that’s a minimum of 2.4 million phone calls, which translates to a potential $19M in added expenses (averaging $8-20 per call). 

Even beyond the added efficiencies and cost savings, the staff console helps to keep the “human touch” alive in healthcare, allowing staff to respond in their own words and even emojis.

#8: Speak Your Patients’ Language  

Nothing is more frustrating than needing help and the person who you’re speaking to for help doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say. Unfortunately, this happens all too often in health care – a widespread issue that creates barriers for patients to access the care they need.

According to a 2020 study, 67% of limited English speakers note language as a barrier to accessing care in the U.S., leading to poorer quality and outcomes. Several risk factors manifest in routine communication failures, such as instructions for medication or follow-up care questions.

Basic patient communication platforms that typically only provide limited language capabilities may not be able to reach a provider’s entire diverse population. If your patient population speaks additional languages or may not have English as their primary language, you’ll serve them better by engaging them in their preferred language. This reduces language barriers potentially hindering patients from receiving the care they may need and, therefore, resulting in poorer outcomes. 

With Artera, you can speak your patients’ language. The Artera platform offers extended languages to send communications in 109+ different languages, increasing access to care and the ability to reach patients in their preferred languages. Languages include English, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Korean, Arabic, Chinese, and many of the most common languages spoken in the US. 

#9: Utilize Intelligent Analytics to Make Informed Decisions 

If you’re reading this, your organization is likely increasing its investment in healthcare technology and digital solutions. What this also likely means is developing a greater understanding of how the tools you’re investing in are creating an impact across your organization and if there are opportunities to improve upon. 

Did you know that Approximately 30% of the world’s data volume is generated by the healthcare industry today?

Regardless of your organization’s size or data capabilities, data insights will provide value to your entire organization. And in today’s world, your decisions – especially in regards to the patient experience – should be driven by data. So, what if you don’t have the ability to see any data through your new technology? How do you know if the platform is working? How do you make informed decisions to improve the patient experience? 

That’s the reality of using some basic communication platforms that do not offer analytics capabilities – you DON’T have the ability to see data that can help inform your decisions to ultimately improve the patient experience and retain patients within your system. Without analytics, how can you expect to see what’s working and what isn’t working? How do you know your patients are truly happy with your communications strategy? 

A strong analytics offering gets you the data you need, easily and seamlessly and delivers insights to help you see where improvements may be possible. With Artera, healthcare organizations receive analytics reports and dashboards that elevate reporting capabilities, power unique insights, and improve data value and transparency. You have the flexibility to use common reports that have helped more than 500 customers or you can create your own.  Either way, you’ll have your data, your way.

Our customers have indicated that they love the Analytics dashboards and reports that are available to them: in fact, 100% of enterprise organizations that have Artera Analytics Plus utilize it every month.

Why settle for basic texting, when you can deliver better conversations with Artera? 

Your patients deserve the best, so what are you waiting for? With better conversations comes better connections and even better outcomes. Learn how Artera fuels better conversations, here.

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1. Artera Data evaluating 16+ million patients, 2023
2. 60+ million unique patient records, Artera Database, 2023
3. Artera Data, 12-month average, 2023
4. Artera Data from 940,000-patient health system, 2023

The post 9 Ways to Go Beyond Basic Texting and Deliver Better Conversations  appeared first on Artera.

The Patient Engagement Playbook

Artera recently created “The Patient Engagement Playbook,” which offers six best practices for patient engagement to enable you to foster lasting connections with your patients that will ultimately lead to greater results for both your patients and your organization. The playbook will walk you through six critical steps to increase patient engagement – the fourth of which covers personalized care experiences. 

But before we dive into the significance of personalized care, let’s define what engaged patients are:

• Informed – They understand their health status and the recommended treatment.
• Heard – They communicate with their providers and participate in shared decision-making.
• Empowered – They believe they can change their health outcomes.
• Active – They take action on their health based on personal learnings and overall understanding. 

Although engaging patients – and keeping them engaged – can be challenging, it is a vital process for attracting and retaining them. Effectively engaging patients in their care is essential to improving health outcomes and staff efficiency, increasing patient satisfaction, and reducing costs while driving revenue. 

“The Patient Engagement Playbook” discusses how greater patient engagement can: 

Improve health outcomes: Strong patient engagement increases adherence to treatment regimen recommendations among patients, which in turn leads to fewer complications and re-hospitalizations. Several U.S. studies recently reported coordinated care trials that actively engaged patients with chronic disease resulted in significant mortality reductions compared to a control group who merely took appropriate medications. The studies suggest chronically ill patients who are engaged in their care live longer than unengaged peers who otherwise receive similar treatment, meaning health and well-being are fostered by engaged and activated patients. [1, 2, 3] 

Enhance staff efficiency: Patient engagement strategies can help reduce front-end staff workload by reducing time spent on phone calls which take up a significant portion of time and can lead to support staff burnout. With more valuable time back, staff can spend more time on direct patient care. 

Increase patient satisfaction: Personalized and unique patient engagement enables patients to feel heard and seen and empowers them to make decisions about their care. This can enhance overall satisfaction, and facilitate longer-standing relationships with providers while improving patient experience measures. 

Reduce cost and drive revenue: Patient engagement directly contributes to outcomes affecting hospital costs and reimbursement for health systems. Executing effective patient engagement strategies also means better patient retention and referrals.

The future of healthcare: Delivering personalized care experiences 

According to CVS Health’s 2022 Health Insights survey, 85% of consumers believe personalized care is important. In fact, 83% of survey respondents said they want their primary care physician to know about deeply personal items such as their family medical history, genetics, and inherited lifestyle habits. 

What this really comes down to is embracing a more holistic, whole-person approach to healthcare that patients ultimately desire. So, how can you deliver more personalized care experiences? 

Provide flexible care

First and foremost, personalization should extend to how patients would like to receive care. For example, would they prefer a virtual, telehealth, or in-person visit? Are they open to non-traditional healthcare options, such as holistic approaches involving diet, exercise, alternative medicine, or counseling? 

The flexibility of care service offerings allows patients to manage their healthcare experiences in a unique way that aligns with their goals and values, encouraging them to remain activated throughout their care journeys. Remember to ask the patient about their goals, values, and fears around care — a practice that is critical to providing personalized and individualized care plans. 

Optimize communication 

Personalization should also apply to communication. More than ever, providers and patients agree that good communication and understanding are the keys to successful care plans and health outcomes. 

How we communicate has changed dramatically within the lifetime of nearly every patient, however – and it is no longer sufficient to merely send mass push communications. To deliver personalized care, you must design and implement a unique, conversational relationship with your patients. 

Think about what makes your patients unique and how best you can connect with them. What languages do they speak? What kinds of messages resonate best with certain patients? Make sure to keep these in mind, among a number of other factors:

• Have a conversation: Enable conversational messaging that allows both patients and providers to reach out or respond. This empowers patients to ask questions, share concerns, or provide feedback and allows providers to gain a greater perspective and understanding of their patients. 
• Honor patient preferences: enable communication in patients’ preferred channels – text, phone, or email – to deliver a more personalized care experience. 
• Provide language support: offer communication in patients’ preferred/native language. Research suggests those with limited English proficiency (LEP) face barriers to health care access, experience lower quality care, and suffer worse health outcomes. By addressing language barriers, patients can better understand their care needs and ultimately make better-informed decisions for their health. 
• Personalize messages: spamming patients with mass communications that are non-personalized and questionably relevant will make it harder for the patient to filter out what information from their provider is actually important. Keep it conversational and unique. 
• Leverage AI-enabled capabilities: streamline unique workflows with the use of customized automation to ensure personalization; empower patients with information and self-service opportunities (scheduling, pre-appointment instructions, or referrals). 
• Utilize data and analytics: embrace data to inform intelligent communication strategies. Patient communication platforms may provide insightful analytics, such as confirmation and no-show rates, which would help you determine the ideal timing for sending messages. 

According to McKinsey and Company’s Next in Personalization 2021 Report, companies that engage in customer personalization produce 40 percent more in revenue than their peers that do not. Therefore, personalized care is not only beneficial to the patient but it’s also profitable for health systems in terms of increasing the bottom line. 

In addition to providing flexible care and optimizing communication, here are additional ways to deliver personalized care experiences to your patients:

1. Define a customer-centric vision statement

Define a vision statement from key expectations identified in patient satisfaction surveys. A vision statement provides guiding values for every service staff member in your health system and acts as a reference point for your patient experience goals.

2. Equip employees with customer service skills

Like any customer, patients want to feel heard, instead of being “processed” from a script. Training patient-facing staff on how to handle customer emotions with empathy is crucial to creating personal experiences.

3. Provide omnichannel choices

In today’s digital world, patients expect to access customer service in the communications channel they find most convenient whether it’s phone, text, email, or social media. Patients expect your business to be there when they need you, so provide omnichannel communication choices to both retain and attract patients to your healthcare system.

4. Offer Self-Service Experiences

People are used to finding information by themselves in today’s digital world and expect the same speed and convenience when they are patients. Patient portals, appointment self-scheduling, automated check-ins, and other customer-centric resources provide customers with self-service tools they can easily and conveniently use throughout their entire patient journey.

5. Engage in Frequent touch points – but not too many

According to the aforementioned CVS survey, both consumers and providers feel customized text reminders or phone follow-ups of screenings and checkups are important to good health and a patient’s ability to successfully follow a prescribed care plan. Use digital tools like a patient communication platform to engage in frequent interventions and touch points to ensure open lines of communication between the patient and provider. 

Make sure not to over communicate with your patients, however, as this can lead to fatigue or patients opting out of future messages. Researchers in a JAMA Open Network study found that individuals who received 10 or more text messages from their provider in a year were significantly more likely to opt out of future messages: “The findings suggest that a high volume of automated health care messages may be associated with a greater likelihood of patients opting out of future messages and that health care systems should use these messages judiciously to minimize message fatigue,” the researchers wrote.

6. Use patient satisfaction surveys to assess what’s working

Promoting positive patient experience is important when offering a holistic healthcare package. One of the best ways to listen and learn from your customers is to ask them. Use patient satisfaction surveys to ask customers what they think is working and what needs improvement. The results can help optimize your customer service and ensure it’s as personalized as possible. Implement automated tools such as customized surveys through text or embedding a personalized link for more insightful feedback and a higher rate of response.

7. Provide platforms for employee feedback

As the eyes and ears of any contact center, service agents are crucial to delivering personalized care experiences. They’re also the ones speaking to your customers every day, which means they’ll be the first to notice trends that can help improve your customer service offerings. Providing platforms for them to contribute ideas and constructive feedback can therefore help stimulate small changes that make a massive difference.

Your customer service staff are the frontline when it comes to interacting with patients so it’s crucial they are trained on delivering personalized care experiences. It’s also important to get constructive feedback from your support staff on how patients are responding to your customized patient services and how to improve them. Set up a regular procedure by which your customer service staff can offer ideas and observations in an open and non-partisan environment.

8. Evaluate and evolve your services  

Over time, patient profiles will change so you need to consistently review their preferences and seek feedback to ensure you are still offering a personalized experience. Once you have this insight, your organization needs to evaluate the data and respond to the preference changes by evolving your services to keep up with consumer demand.

Overall, by prioritizing personalized care experiences, your organization has the potential to shift the clinical paradigm from “What’s the matter?” to something more meaningful: “What matters to you?”

Optimized patient engagement strategies are essential for healthcare providers looking to properly address patient needs, which have shifted dramatically as a result of healthcare consumerization and the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, providers need to consider the six strategies in The Patient Engagement Playbook to facilitate greater patient engagement, connection, and understanding.

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This question was at the heart of a recent Artera-sponsored webinar hosted by Anthony Guerra, Founder and Editor-in-Chief at healthsystemCIO. The panel included industry leaders Sara Vaezy, Chief Strategy and Digital Officer at Providence, Pamela Landis, Senior Vice President of Digital Engagement at Hackensack Meridian Health, and Guillaume de Zwirek, CEO of Artera.

Their insights not only provided meaningful answers to this challenge but also offered actionable steps providers and health tech innovators can take to create a cohesive digital patient engagement strategy.

Below, we break down the key takeaways from the discussion, focusing on innovative differentiators, care gap closure and steps to get leadership buy-in on next-generation technologies that will drive results – both in terms of outcomes and finances.

Differentiation Matters

The digital health landscape continues to evolve rapidly. Patients now expect their healthcare experiences to match the seamless, on-demand quality of consumer brands like Netflix or Amazon. Platforms designed for digital patient engagement must balance meeting these expectations with the pressing need for standardization to ensure operational consistency and cybersecurity across enterprise health systems.

Yet, as Sara Vaezy noted during the panel, standardization and innovation aren’t necessarily opposing forces. When aligned with clear goals such as improving access and reducing friction in the patient-provider relationship, they become complementary tools. “You can standardize where differentiation doesn’t matter, but must invest in innovation where personalization and experience can make a real impact,” Vaezy explained. “From our perspective, you really need to invest in differentiation – you don’t want to have the same stuff everybody else has.”

The panelists agreed that differentiation matters when it comes to acquiring and retaining patients. “I don’t want to look like everybody else in our market,” Landis said. “You don’t compete by looking like everybody else.” She believes patient loyalty isn’t just about the quality of care—it’s about access, ease and personalization. “Patients are loyal to their doctors, not necessarily their health systems,” Pamela stressed. “Our job is to use technology to strengthen those relationships. I always think: ‘What’s going to make it easier for patients and our clinicians to have a better relationship with each other?'”

Patient-Centric Innovation Drives Long-Term Engagement

Guillaume de Zwirek expanded on this, explaining how technologies that streamline patient access, appointment scheduling and engagement create differentiation in competitive markets. By deploying solutions that focus on simplicity and immediacy, health systems don’t just meet expectations—they exceed them. He also believes healthcare is stepping into a more bundled approach, similar to how digital streaming channels have started to partner – Hulu and Disney Plus, for example.

Ultimately, providers are looking to leverage fewer vendors while getting them to do more – that’s the easiest way to cut costs – for the time being. That being said, the long-term ramifications of these type of decisions could be detrimental in the long-run, de Zwirek believes.

Vaezy agrees that health systems will likely see the consequences of a consolidated tech stack in 6-12 months, noting that providers may be “getting a platform to do a little bit of everything, but nothing super well.” If health systems choose to go another route, investing in differentiated patient engagement tools, the challenge remains to showcase clear ROI. Landis agrees:

“Patient experience should not be sacrificed to check a box for tech stack standardization. In fields like radiology or cardiovascular systems, we demand excellence, ensuring tools meet both clinical and business needs—why should patient engagement be any different? As an industry, we haven’t fully cracked the code on delivering tools that truly empower patients. While progress is being made, most tools today simply provide access to past care information—lab results, clinical notes—but fail to guide patients on what to do next. Moving forward, we need tools that help patients understand, access and manage their care proactively.”

Pamela Landis, SVP, Digital Engagement, Hackensack Meridian Health

Making the Case for Digital Patient Engagement Solutions

From the vendor perspective, de Zwirek is eager to know how technology builders can help health systems make cases internally for differentiated tools. One of the biggest barriers to innovation isn’t the technology—it’s getting buy-in from internal stakeholders, particularly CIOs and CFOs.

According to Landis, one of the ways to do so is by tracking outcomes and proving a technology’s ROI, including care gap closure. “With Artera, we’re able to prove that we’re closing care gaps, improving quality and increasing patient engagement – all while reducing no-shows and scheduling more patients for essential preventive care like annual wellness visits, mammograms and colorectal and lung cancer screenings. We’ve been able to successfully track these outcomes, clearly demonstrating the bottom-line impact and marketing lift, showing the difference between inaction and the results achieved with personalized outreach.”

Landis also shared a compelling story about a patient who scheduled a mammogram due to a text reminder, leading to early detection and treatment that saved her life. “Don’t discount the power of a story of an individual patient that you’ve helped make better – that still appeals to our CFOs and other leaders in our C-Suite. We have to show every single time the value of how a tool improved care and grew our patient base.”

In addition to sharing a patient story, Vaezy believes having a data-driven tool that can measure and quantify attribution is critical to driving further investment, as it helps to tell the top line story. She also believes having an open ecosystem and greater interoperability – encouraging greater data exchange with APIs across a tech stack – will be beneficial to all. “Everything sort of operate in silos, preventing us from consolidating the gains of the technologies we’re investing in. We can actually make the case for having some of the best of breed technologiees if they can talk to other parts of environment.”

Landis believes a good analogy for this is the banks, as they developed an open infrastructure, allowing consumers to put their cards in any ATM, allowing them to access their money from wherever. “In the end, they put the customer first. I think in our industry, we have to get to a similar point.”

Tips for Making the Case:

• Use patient anecdotes alongside data to appeal to leadership’s analytical and emotional sides.
• Quantify the downstream impact of innovations, such as increased capacity, patient satisfaction, or care gap closure.
• Consider going “at-risk” as a vendor—offering pay-for-performance models to share the financial impact of implementing new technology.

Where to Go from Here: Prioritize Growth

While the C-suite may naturally tend to go toward standardization – in light of reducing costs – Landis believes “You do not cut your way to financial stability – you have to grow your way to differentiate yourself and to take care of your patients.” While the C-suite wants to be innovative – and to do the right thing – it’s on the operators to show them how it can be done. Showcasing the difference between inaction and personalized, targeted outreach will be critical when making the case to innovate.

Balancing standardization and innovation is a nuanced process, requiring collaboration between IT leaders, clinical teams and external technology partners. However, the reward is clear—health systems that find the right equilibrium will foster better patient loyalty, engagement and outcomes in an increasingly competitive landscape.

If you’re interested in learning more about how leading healthcare organizations are navigating these changes, check out the full webinar recording to tap into specific strategies that can help your organization thrive, here, or read the healthsystemCIO recap, here.

The post Webinar Recap: Balancing Standardization and Innovation in the Digital Patient Engagement Space appeared first on Artera.

The consequence? Patients are slipping through the cracks. This is not only problematic for health outcomes but can also lead to increases in readmissions, lower HCAHPS scores and financial penalties. The reality is that U.S. hospitals experience an average 15 percent readmission rate, costing Medicare an estimated $26 billion annually. Hospitals performing poorly in the Medicare Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (“HRRP”) can be penalized up to 3% of overall Medicare revenue.

In a recent fireside chat at Artera Heartbeat’24, renowned leaders from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Houston Methodist provided insights into their distinct approaches to post-discharge communication and the transformative role Artera played in their journey. Hosted by Meg Aranow, Artera Advisor, the fireside chat featured Ashley Trambley, Director, Discharge Care Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Theresa Pinn-Kirkland, Nursing Supervisor, Post-Discharge Care Manager at Houston Methodist.

Getting Started: Unique Approaches to Post-Discharge Communication 

While both Vanderbilt and Houston Methodist prioritized implementing post-discharge communication in their respective organizations, they took quite different approaches. 

On the one hand, Vanderbilt’s journey began with a decentralized model of discharge phone calls, eventually integrating a gap care clinic to support patients during the vital 30-day post-discharge period. They ultimately started with a pilot of nurses cold calling – and through that, they identified a need for automation as there was no way to scale that and support the entire health system. They wanted to create 24/7, 365 access to a dedicated team for all post-discharge needs.

Their next iteration of the Discharge Care Center is what they’re calling the “Discharge Clinic,”  which helps review the network of transitions of care, identify congestion points within patient care and facilitate gap closures, as well as medication and therapy orders within the 30-day window after discharge.

On the other hand, Houston Methodist had something in place initially for post-discharge: robocalls. That being said, the health system was searching for a more robust platform that engaged patients more deeply: “While we had something in place, we were limited on when to reach out to patients, we played a lot of phone tag and it just wasn’t an ideal platform for us to use,” said Pinn-Kirkland.  When Houston Methodist moved to Artera, they added 18 units across seven hospitals, which meant more patient outreach. 

If You Encourage Patients to Reach Out, Be Prepared to Respond

Through the initial learnings of phone call outreach at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Trambley and her team felt passionate about improving the patient experience, and making it as seamless as possible for the patient: “If you’re going to call me and take time out of your day to respond to this technology that we put in place, I want to be able to answer your questions and navigate you. Our general motto is: if we don’t know the answer, we’ll find out who does. We’ll take the ownership. As a brand, if you can’t navigate your health system, how am I as a patient supposed to figure it out?” said Trambley. 

For Houston Methodist, staying within the confines of corporate hours, Monday through Friday, eight to five has been has been somewhat of a hurdle. Since many patients face issues in the evenings and weekends, it can be difficult to get back to patients in a timely manner – factors that can adversely impact patient outcomes, revisits and readmissions. Pinn-Kirkland believes more coverage or extended hours could help more patients.

Both institutions also tackle the issue of communication overload, with patients sometimes feeling bombarded by messages. Pinn-Kirkland suggests: “Patients feel like ‘I’m getting a lot of stuff bombarded at me, but when I have questions, I feel like nobody is there to be meaningfully helpful.’” Houston Methdoist is working hard to get better at this, routing patients to where they need to go, and even @ mentioning relevant team members in the Artera platform to streamline communications to the right department. 

Trambley emphasizes that every message sent to patients must be “value added.” Understanding one’s health system and staying attuned to other communications is essential. She notes, “Unified communications governance, especially as we venture into the clinical space, will be crucial. If the experience isn’t seamless and valuable, I would disengage as a patient.”

Achieving Clinical Excellence Through Post-Discharge Communication

Despite the hurdles, both organizations have seen significant results with their post-discharge programs.

“Anecdotally, we all know that if you do a good job with post-discharge care, if you’re helping patients transition home safely and closing these gaps, you end up with patients who are happier, who have better health outcomes, who don’t return to the hospital for unnecessary readmissions or revisits. But it’s hard to quantify that,” said Pinn-Kirkland.

This is why Houston Methodist participated in a study – featured in the British Medical Journal – called “Investigating Patient Engagement Associations Between A Postdischarge Texting Programme And Patient Experience, Readmission And Revisit Rates Outcomes.” The results were substantial, with the “engaged” cohort (patients who responded with 3 or more messages) reporting higher HCAHPS scores, 20 percent fewer revisit rates and 29 percent fewer overall readmissions.

Overall, it’s clear that investing in post-discharge communication is crucial for creating a seamless patient experience. The insights from Vanderbilt and Houston Methodist strongly emphasize the need for personalized communication to enhance patient satisfaction and engagement in the digital era.

As they look towards the future, both health systems are poised to further refine their communication strategies, acknowledging the evolving nature of healthcare. By marrying cutting-edge technology with empathetic care practices, these two forward-thinking institutions illustrate a future where post-discharge communication is both efficient and personalized, catering to both clinical and personal patient needs.

Want to learn more about how your organization can partner with Artera to improve clinical and post-discharge communication? Check out Artera Care Navigator, our new product that empowers Care Managers and Clinical Teams to bridge the gap between hospital and follow-up care.

The post Navigating Post-Discharge Communication and Achieving Clinical Excellence  appeared first on Artera.

According to our research, large health systems typically depend on more than 11 digital health vendors, each independently communicating with patients through various channels. Different departments often manage these interactions, resulting in a lack of awareness and coordination of messages that can hinder the patient experience.

In an effort to address these challenges, an Artera Heartbeat’24 panel brought together industry leaders to discuss innovative solutions for integrating vendors to create a thriving ecosystem and improve the patient experience. 

Hosted by Zach Wood, Chief Product Officer at Artera, the panel featured insights from Amy Partilla, Digital Engagement Consultant at Hackensack Meridian Health, Marcy McDonald, Nursing Informatics Manager at Uintah Basin Healthcare, Chelsea Simon, Chief Operating Officer of Advanced Pain Care, and David Wright, CEO and Founder of Disruptive Innovations.

These four panelists have rejected the status quo of fragmented, patient communications. Instead, they’re on a journey to create a thriving ecosystem of vendor partners with us at Artera, bringing them together to create a seamless patient and staff experience. Let’s take a closer look at the key takeaways from this insightful conversation.

Overcoming Common Obstacles

In an effort to address workforce challenges, reduce costs and improve quality of care, health systems across the nation are increasing their focus on digital and AI transformation. Despite their priorities changing, executing on this transformation has presented major headwinds and relatively slow progress. 

Conducted by McKinsey & Company, a recent survey of 200 health system executives noted the top three challenges to executing digital and AI transformation, including:

1. Budget or capital limitations
2. The digital switch is too challenging (from legacy systems)
3. Workforce not ready to implement new technology

Our Artera Heartbeat’24 panelists weighed in on the subject, agreeing that while vendor integration offers many benefits, the journey to successful integration is often filled with challenges, including: 

Navigating an Abundance of Vendors

For Partilla, one of her organization’s primary challenges is managing the extensive network of vendors they collaborate with. She expressed, “We work with numerous vendors and have multiple channels for communicating with patients. How can we gain a comprehensive overview and ensure we’re not overlapping or creating inefficiencies in our messaging?”

Wright echoed Partilla’s concerns, emphasizing that health systems should thoroughly evaluate every technology they’ve invested in to identify all capabilities, enabling the development of the most effective full-stack solution.

Addressing Legacy Systems

Many healthcare providers rely on legacy systems that are not easily compatible with modern communication technologies, and thus, make the digital switch more complex. Overcoming this challenge requires strategic planning and investment in scalable, interoperable solutions that can integrate seamlessly with existing systems.

Managing Change & Scalability 

Introducing new technology and communication workflows can be met with resistance from staff used to traditional processes. This can create a lack of standardization across a health system, as different departments and areas of the organization use tools differently. Effective change management is essential to ensure smooth transitions and adoption of new technologies. Training programs and clear communication can help staff adapt to the new system.

Success Stories: Creating a More Seamless Patient Experience

Despite various challenges in driving transformation forward, many healthcare organizations have successfully integrated vendor partners to streamline communications and improve the patient experience. Panelists at Artera Heartbeat’24 shared several success stories that offer valuable lessons for other organizations.

Hackensack Meridian Health’s Journey

Partilla discussed Hackensack Meridian Health’s success in reducing communication silos across its network and resolving overlap in messages, which we’re leaving patients confused. “It’s one of those small things that will make a big difference to patients. If they feel like you don’t know the right hand’s talking to the left hand, that’s not going to build confidence in your healthcare system.” By addressing these issues and streamlining communication through Artera Harmony, they have achieved greater consistency in messaging – especially within its surgery module and care gap programs. For example, Hackensack launched a mammography campaign that led to significant increases in booked appointments and revenue, while critically identifying early health issues for many patients.

Advanced Pain Care’s Approach

For Chelsea Simon of Advanced Pain Care, “simplicity for patients and staff was key” when first starting on the journey. By focusing on user-friendly online scheduling through Artera ScheduleCare and conversational messaging, Advanced Pain Care saw a significant decrease in phone call volume and an increase in automated text messages, in addition to greater patient satisfaction. These changes allowed them to reallocate staff resources more efficiently and improve the patient experience.

Uintah Basin Healthcare’s Approach

McDonald shared how Uintah Basin Healthcare, a rural provider, also wanted to start by keeping it relatively simple, as the organization’s providers tend to travel to many places within the community. Ultimately, through the strategic use of vendor integrations, they were able to ensure patients received the right messages at the right time – from one trusted phone number. This has been particularly beneficial in ensuring patients arrive at the correct locations for their appointments, ultimately saving time and resources.

Best Practices for Creating a Thriving Ecosystem

Creating a thriving ecosystem for seamless patient communication requires careful planning and execution. The panelists shared several best practices that can help healthcare organizations achieve this goal.

Start with Patient In Mind 

For Wright, looking at “people, process, technology and methodology across the entire patient experience life cycle is a crucial step” to start out. As the patient journey is not linear, health systems must better understand the intent of the patient, as well as their preferences, instead of merely recreating the same workflows. Take the time to build out and create new processes and workflows that benefit the patient and your operations. Leveraging AI is a potential tool to improve efficiencies. 

Leverage Data to Improve Outcomes

Technology plays a crucial role in effective vendor integration. By leveraging AI-driven solutions and data analytics, organizations can gain insights into patient preferences and communication patterns, enabling them to deliver personalized messages that resonate with patients. For example, Partilla and her team regularly review the Harmony Insights Dashboard to identify opportunities to reduce over-messaging and highlight trends.   

Establish Consistent & Branded Messaging

Organizations should aim to establish a consistent messaging strategy that aligns with their overall goals. This involves mapping out a cohesive framework for patient engagement and ensuring that every communication – regardless of what department it comes from – sounds consistent in tone and voice. 

Engaging Stakeholders Across Departments

Successful integration is a team effort that requires input from various departments. Engaging stakeholders from IT, patient access, care management and compliance ensures that all aspects of communication are considered and optimized for efficiency.

The Journey Continues 

While our panelists are still learning how to navigate their organizations’ patient communication strategies and ecosystems, they are confident their work is paying off toward a better staff and patient experience. By addressing common challenges and leveraging best practices, organizations can successfully integrate vendor partners and create a more streamlined, efficient communication ecosystem. This not only enhances patient experience but also delivers significant financial and operational benefits.

For healthcare providers looking to achieve these objectives, vendor consolidation is a key strategy that can unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation. By investing in the right technologies and engaging stakeholders across departments, organizations can create a patient communication strategy that truly makes a difference.

Explore more about how your organization can benefit from Artera Harmony and the Artera Marketplace. Together, we can create a future where patient communications are seamless, personalized and impactful.

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