How healthcare can accelerate time to value

Despite the advances of the modern age, many hospitals and healthcare practices rely on antiquated communications technologies. These outdated systems are costly, causing long delays throughout the patient journey and poor patient satisfaction scores (HIPAA Journal, 2022). Worse, inadequate communication can even jeopardize patient outcomes.

Moreover, these legacy technologies can delay time to value (TTV), or the time between a patient’s request for a specific service or “value” and the moment they actually receive that requested value. Healthcare organizations should strive to accelerate TTV by deploying communications automation and workflow optimization.       

Refining the patient journey  

Patients want their needs met rapidly. In fact, 68% of patients expect to be able to book a medical appointment online – one study also found that 35% of appointments got scheduled outside of typical work hours (10to8, 2022).

By leveraging communications automation, healthcare companies can reduce TTV. Consider how long it takes a patient to call an office, sit on hold only to be transferred from one department to the next. Alternatively, with workflow optimization, someone can dial their doctor and reach an interactive voice response (IVR) with dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) that immediately accesses that doctor’s scheduler.

Better yet, by using DTMF, a patient can select and confirm their appointment time themselves. Automated SMS text messages and emails help remind patients of their appointments, reducing no-shows and boosting revenue. Plus, the patient can cancel easily, giving the medical practice time to fill new appointments.   

Enriching the patient experience  

Patients, like consumers and their preferred brands, love the freedom to choose how they interact with a medical provider. Through communications automation and self-service options, healthcare brands can empower their patients to engage with them anywhere and anytime.

Automated solutions also allow patients to communicate with healthcare companies on the channels they prefer, be that social messaging, SMS or voice. Workflow optimization supports other self-service features, including payment processing which permits patients to pay bills securely and with intuitive help from digital assistants.  

These workflow optimizations accelerate TTV, improving the patient experience and creating more engaged and loyal patients. Additionally, faster TTV will result in higher satisfaction scores and rapid feedback on patient surveys.

Don’t underestimate the power of data

While healthcare relies on data, most companies fail to unlock the full potential of this valuable information. If data remains siloed, the patient journey cannot be seamless. Ultimately, poor data management will slow TTV, frustrating everyone.

Medical organizations can utilize communication autonomation to extract actionable insights from their data, thereby reducing TTV. Industry-leading communications automation platforms come with comprehensive data capture capabilities and KPI dashboards for real-time analysis, on-demand reporting and location-based performance.

Dashboards can also provide visibility on communications like total calls, call duration, answer ratio, call completion status, disconnect reason and many other factors. Furthermore, these best-in-class platforms let healthcare companies configure notifications to send data alerts right to a manager’s inbox based on threshold and anomaly notifications.

Better communication, better patient outcomes 

Accelerating TTV by modernizing communication processes will enhance the patient journey, boost satisfaction and improve the quality of care and patient outcomes. And with IntelePeer’s communication automation platform, your healthcare practice can build more personalized virtual customer experiences – in a fraction of the time. To modernize your communications today, contact us.