Why Patient Portals Are Important in Healthcare Written by Jeff Tormey on September 7, 2020. Posted in Connect. With the advent of the Internet came a highly disruptive innovation for healthcare organizations: patient portals. Now, patients can take a much more active role in their care by having nearly instant access to their own medical records. In the past, a patient had to get medical records by showing up to the doctor’s office and asking them for a copy. Now, most of the information is digitized. But that’s not all patient portals can do. Patient portals now include appointment scheduling, telehealth features, and educational content to help patients understand their conditions better. In this article, we’re going to discuss the real benefits of patient portals and why they’ve become so important. Benefits of Patient Portals Access To Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Saves Patients & Staff Time. A patient with access to their patient portal can access their medical records at any time via the Internet. No more having to wait in line at the doctor’s office just for some paperwork. What’s even nicer is that administrative staff, who used to spend a great deal of time copying medical records and updating the audit trail, can now simply direct the patient to their portal so that they can get the information electronically. This saves a great deal of time because the information can be securely accessed from anywhere. Best of all, now patient portals can be made to work on mobile, making access possibly truly everywhere. Educational Content Makes It Easy For Patients To Engage. Patient engagement is a huge buzzword in healthcare organizations, but it has real implications. Engaged patients have better health outcomes, are more satisfied with their care and are much more likely to return in the future. To learn how you can get started engaging your patients, check out our blog post on how to increase patient engagement with patient portals. Educational content hosted on patient portals can make it easier for patients to take a more active role in their care. They can have access to relevant information about their conditions, medications, all in one place on the Internet. Patients no longer have to sift through a stack of pamphlets just to get the information they need. Patient Portals Can Be Used To Schedule Appointments. A big part of staff time is spent on scheduling and verifying appointments. If a patient is able to do that themselves with automatic scheduling software, then that’s one less thing that your staff has to worry about. Time is also spent on reminding people of appointments. Patient portals can make appointment reminders automated, when integrated with your CRM that keeps track of all of these automations, which leads into the next benefit. Patient Portals Can Integrate With CRM Software. Your CRM, if set up correctly, can act as a single source of truth about your organization. It can include information about patient outreach campaigns and their conversion rates. Your CRM can also be a place where all patient information is securely stored and accessed. Patient portals can integrate with this software, making certain tasks completely automated. If a patient portal has appointment scheduling and is integrated with your CRM, the patient’s appointment is scheduled and a tag is applied in the CRM making it known that the patient has scheduled an appointment. This is powerful, and nobody on staff needed to do anything to make it work! Medical patient portal integrated with CRM software make for a much more efficient organization. That being said, patient portals are not perfect and neither are CRMs. Most organizations need a fair bit of help making sure that they’re doing their job properly. We at Guideway Care specialize in patient engagement solutions and marketing automation for healthcare organizations. Call us at 855-588-5918 for more information about how to make a patient portal work for you!
Top Criteria For Choosing A Healthcare CRM Platform Written by Jeff Tormey on August 31, 2020. Posted in Connect. Choosing a CRM is a big decision. You have to spend the money on the CRM itself. Then you have to construct it to fit your needs. After that, you need to migrate your systems to the CRM and integrate it with your current software suites. It’s a giant pain and a long process that costs thousands of dollars and months of time. For this reason, you want to choose the right CRM for your healthcare organization. But what criteria should healthcare organizations be considering when choosing a CRM? Let’s go over them now. Top Criteria For Healthcare CRM Platforms HIPAA Compliance All CRMs marketing themselves as being for healthcare organizations MUST include procedures for keeping your organization compliant with HIPAA regulations. Make sure to grill the sales rep with questions about how the CRM keeps EMR safe, and how the CRM keeps an audit trail. Learning Curve Migration is a big enough pain as it is, but then you have to make sure that your staff is adequately trained to use the software. If the software is too hard to navigate or use, then it becomes a liability rather than an asset. This is a difficult one to estimate, but by doing a demo of the CRM software you’ll be able to figure out how difficult or easy it will be to train your staff to use it. Ease of Integration Many CRMs include a great deal of features out of the box. However, not all of them integrate well with every system. If your CRM doesn’t integrate well with your billing software, for instance, then it will be hard to provide a single source of truth for decision makers! When speaking to a sales rep for a CRM software, make sure you let them know which software you use and for what purpose. Then, ask them how it will be integrated. It’s important to know how it integrates, because if it’s not a seamless integration, then it may cause additional problems down the line. Feature List CRMs generally brag about their features, and healthcare CRMs are no exception. However, some features are more important than others. Many CRMs are little more than glorified autoresponder software, whereas others can do nearly anything. Ask the sales rep about each of the features and how it helps healthcare organizations manage their data and workflows. Automation Ability This is separate from the other features, because automation is such an incredibly helpful feature that it needs to be mentioned. Can your CRM save your staff time on menial tasks, and can it automate things that used to be done manually? For example, if your CRM can be accessed by multiple departments without having to start and keep track of an email chain, this is a huge time save. There are other things that CRMs can automate, such as patient outreach, segmentation, appointment reminders, scheduling, and so much more. Price We didn’t include price first, because we don’t believe price should be the main criteria. But it is important, and that fact cannot be ignored. Consider your other criteria, then look and see what you’ll have to pay to get all the features you want. Don’t just go with the lowest bid: choose the CRM that fits your budget while giving you the most relevant features.
Patient Engagement in Healthcare: How Understanding The Patient Experience Produces Better Outcomes Written by Jeff Tormey on August 17, 2020. Posted in Connect. Patient engagement is a term commonly used in healthcare organizations. It’s used so much that its meaning has become muddied and those who discuss it may as well be talking about different things. For those who are interested in patient engagement to produce better patient outcomes, this topic is highly important and its specifics are not to be ignored. So how is patient engagement so important, and why should we be focused on implementing initiatives to improve it? Let’s discuss. The Benefits of Focusing on Patient Engagement in Healthcare Organizations It’s clear that patient engagement is beneficial. But what are the statistics on patient engagement improvements? Let’s find out. Impacts on Patient Satisfaction A study done for the California Healthcare Foundation showed that a focus on patient engagement improved satisfaction. By implementing a way for patients to get online access to their health records, they were able to report a 90% satisfaction rating. Happier patients mean patients who are more likely to return for another issue, or to continue care with your organization for their current issue. It also means patients who are more likely to refer other patients who are suffering from similar conditions. This results in your organization’s growth. Read more: Patient Engagement in Healthcare: How Understanding The Patient Experience Produces Better Outcomes Impacts on Health Outcomes Does focusing on patient engagement actually help the patient get better? The answer is yes. A meta-analysis published by Health Affairs showed that more engaged patients have improved health outcomes than those who are not. In the paper, they discuss several different sources of evidence that show improved health outcomes in more engaged patients. Read the full paper here. How Healthcare Organizations Can Improve Patient Engagement Involve patients in decision making. Of course, a patient cannot diagnose themselves or prescribe themselves medication. However, they can play an active role in their health by making decisions with their physician. Have physicians spend enough time with them so they have enough information to make an informed decision. It’s tempting to just provide them with all the information they need, but it’s not the same as an involved discussion with their physician. Improve your patient portals. Not all patient portals are equal, and some are downright difficult for patients to use. Some patient populations care a lot more about what their patient portals provide. Many patients have expressed that they want a large variety of features in their patient portals, including: Easier to understand information Billing details The ability to book appointments online Telehealth features Summaries of their appointments Just having a patient portal isn’t sufficient: you need your portal to be doing a good job of engaging the patient. Most importantly, the patients need to understand how to use it. We at Guideway Care provide patient portal solutions that integrate with your current systems while also providing the features that patients want. Call us at 888-986-3638 to talk about your patient portal needs!
How To Identify Target Market Characteristics for Healthcare Marketing Written by Jeff Tormey on August 3, 2020. Posted in Connect. Identifying your target market & its characteristics is a key aspect of any marketing initiative. No matter how large or small your business is, you need to know who you’re selling to and why!But healthcare marketing is a little different. There are things that you can and can’t do according to HIPAA regulations, and the consequences for not following them can be dire. So how does a healthcare organization identify and serve their target market? Here’s a simple guide that will help you out. What Are Important Target Market Characteristics In Healthcare? Geographical Area Define your operating area. What communities do you serve? How large is the area? Is it urban, suburban, or rural? Your geographic area is the first thing you should define, as you don’t want to market to people who can’t use your services. Demographics Demographics describe facts about a population. Age, gender, marital status, median income, education level all fall under demographics. Demographic information allows you to infer a great deal about a patient population. For example, you might have a sizable Hispanic population in your area, which might make it wise to market in the Spanish language or deal with issues specific to that population. Behavioral Characteristics Behavioral characteristics, otherwise known as psychographics, can be considered a very general category. It consists of any information that you know about how your patient population behaves. What is their lifestyle like? Do they care a great deal about their health? Health Literacy This is not talked about as much, however it’s extremely important when defining who your target market is. Different patient populations have different levels of engagement with their health. A general hospital is dealing with a very different customer base than a chiropractic clinic. How do you define health literacy for a patient population? Health literacy refers to a patient’s level of understanding about their own health and care. Take your own experiences and the experiences of others in your field: do the patients understand what’s going on, and are they taking an active role in their own care? How Do You Find Target Market Information? The first place you’ll want to look is the US Census Bureau. You will be able to find demographic information about any geographical area in the US, including your own. This will help you understand what your population is likely to be like. For behavioral characteristics and health literacy, you’ll have to do some market research. Constructing a questionnaire for your patients can help you understand what they’re like and how they treat their health. If you are collecting medical data, you must follow HIPAA guidelines! Do not use this data to advertise to people or create lists for use in direct marketing. Instead, use this data to inform your initiatives and to gain an understanding about your clientele as a whole. We can help you with market research and developing your segmenting, targeting, and positioning. Contact us and we’ll assess your healthcare marketing needs for free!
Video Marketing Strategy for Healthcare & Medical Practices Written by Jeff Tormey on July 20, 2020. Posted in Connect. On the Internet, content is king. This doesn’t just refer to written content, either. The average American spends hours every day watching online video. But this trend isn’t just limited to cat videos and video games! Popular healthcare channels such as Dr. Pimple Popper, Healthcare Triage, and Dr. Beau Hightower are run by actively practicing medical doctors and get millions of views each month from people all over the world. It stands to reason that your medical practice or healthcare business can benefit by creating videos for a worldwide audience. But how should you go about it? Why Invest in Video Marketing for Healthcare? Builds Your Brand Image Video marketing is an easy way to build a brand image. Why? Because on video, you can present your brand however you want. You can be seen as empathetic, knowledgeable, reliable, and all of the things that make an effective healthcare practice. Makes You an Authority By sharing information (especially new and valuable information), your brand can become an authority in your space. For example, if you provide bariatric surgery and you have a channel that talks about various weight loss options, protocols for patients, and success stories, your channel can become a host of important information. By connecting your business to your channel, your business becomes an authority on the back of your video content. Provides Shareable Content for Social Media Social media values video content, and it’s easy to see why. Video content keeps people on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and video content is very readily shared by people who watch it. By producing highly valuable and engaging video content, you can leverage the power of social media to your advantage. Read More: Animated Explainer Videos For Healthcare Businesses Healthcare Video Marketing Best Practices Educate and inform your audience. Your video content needs to impart important information on your audience. Medicine and health are very complicated, and most patients are simply not very health literate. If your video content improves the health literacy of your patients by using certain terms correctly, explaining what certain jargon means, and expounding on the impact and importance of said jargon, your content will be easier to watch while also being more informative as a result. Be empathetic. Health issues are worrisome for patients. Just thinking about going to a hospital or clinic makes some people uncomfortable. For this reason, you want the people in your videos to be relatable while also making your audience feel like they’re not dealing with their issues by themselves. You want your video content to be receptive of your audience’s worries. The people in your videos need to show the audience that they care about their issues and that the videos are made to help. It’s not just about education: it’s also about showing that you understand how your audience feels. Solve common problems. Good informational content adequately answers questions that people have about the topic that you introduce. The easiest way to do this is to look for common problems faced by your prospective patients and solve them with quick video explanations. Do people know what to expect before they come into your office? What are common questions people have about certain conditions or health topics? By addressing these, you can solve common problems that patients often have.
5 Ways to Make Your Medical Website More User Friendly Written by Jeff Tormey on June 15, 2020. Posted in Connect. It’s no secret that a user-friendly website will help you generate new business for your practice. But how do you make a user-friendly website? Here are 5 tips to making a user-friendly website for a medical practice. How to Make A User-Friendly Medical Website? Design for mobile first. Most Internet browsing now takes place on mobile. Because of this, it is absolutely paramount to have a mobile-friendly website. However, in 2020, we can take it a step further: mobile FIRST. Since desktop makes up a smaller portion of website views, the design of the site needs to, first and foremost, be optimized for viewing on mobile phones. This includes navigation menus, calls to action, image sizes, and layouts. Your website needs to look good on mobile, otherwise you miss out on a great deal of potential traffic. Make your purpose clear and visible above the fold. Above the fold is an old advertising term that used to refer to content on a newspaper that was above the fold line; however, that term is now used to refer to the content on your webpage that is immediately visible on the screen without scrolling. You need to include who you are (logo), what you do (a main headline), and an action that most users will want to take (call to action button) above the fold. You should also have an easy navigation menu above the fold so that people can browse the rest of your site. Keep your website fast. Site speed is the number one reason why someone would exit your page. If it doesn’t load fast enough, users will simply go to another site that might be able to help them. Keep image sizes small, make sure to keep on-page scripts to a minimum, and choose a dedicated server to host your website. Use Google’s PageSpeed insights to get personalized recommendations for your website. Make your website easy to navigate. A big reason people leave a website is because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. If you have the information on the medical website, but people can’t find it, it’s about as useful as not having the information there at all! How do you make a website easy to navigate? First, have a menu that includes the most important options. Second, make your most important services accessible on the front page. Lastly, make sure that your sitemap is easily accessible by users. The site map is a last resort for people, and is mainly used for search engines. Make sure calls to action are big and prominent. On a website, calls to action are typically in the form of buttons. The button tells the user what to expect when they click, and the button is made large and easily visible so that their eye is drawn to it when they want to take an action. Your button needs to be large enough to click on, but not so large that it takes up too much of the screen. However, that’s not enough. The button needs to also be prominent. The best way to make a prominent button is to use a color that stands out from the rest of your website. If your main website color is green, you’ll want to use orange buttons (for example). If your main website color is blue, red buttons will stand out the most. Stick to complementary colors for important calls to action!
What is Telemedicine, and How Does It Work In Practice? Written by Jeff Tormey on June 2, 2020. Posted in Connect. With the COVID-19 epidemic raging, telemedicine is getting more press than ever before. Clinics are providing telemedicine services even if they cannot keep their doors open. However, telemedicine is nothing new and has been part of healthcare offerings for decades. What is telemedicine, how does it work, and is it a good thing that telemedicine is becoming more and more prevalent? What is Telemedicine? Telemedicine is defined as “healing from a distance”. Specifically, it refers to a doctor assessing, diagnosing, and/or prescribing treatment for an ailment remotely, without the patient having to walk into an office. Read more: 5 Benefits of Telehealth: Why It’s the Future of Healthcare It includes many services where communication with a doctor is necessary, such as helping with reading and understanding health measures, post-surgery check-ins, and figuring out whether you are likely to need urgent care. The difference between telemedicine and telehealth Telemedicine is specific, as it refers to communication with a doctor remotely via telephone, video chat, or messaging. Telemedicine serves the purpose of allowing doctors to interact with their patients without them having to walk into the office. Telehealth, however, is much more general. It refers to any and all remote healthcare services, and is not a service in itself. Online health education is a form of telehealth. So is patient scheduling. Telehealth aims to improve health outcomes for patients, rather than facilitate communication between doctor and patient. Technically, telemedicine is part of the larger telehealth umbrella. How Does Telemedicine Work? Telemedicine works in one of two ways. The first common way is to simply have the patient schedule a call or a video call as an appointment. This is becoming more common as COVID-19 rages on. The second way is through a patient portal which encompasses a greater deal of telemedicine services, such as allowing patients to refill prescriptions or schedule appointments. This is a more comprehensive telemedicine service. The benefits of implementing telemedicine Increase your business’s reach. You can reach people who are in the more far-flung areas that might not be able to get to your practice regularly. Can update patients, and get updates from patients, more frequently. Can broaden the scope of your services, allowing for more comprehensive patient care. If you are interested in offering telemedicine services to take advantage of these benefits, call us at 888-986-3638. At Guideway Care, we help healthcare providers improve their digital offerings and boost their online presence.
The Big Medical Practice Website Checklist: Does Your Practice’s Website Have Everything? Written by Jeff Tormey on May 26, 2020. Posted in Connect. Your medical practice’s website is one of the most important tools for your business. It can be used to relay information, keep patients updated, and even allow patients to schedule appointments with you directly online. But not all medical practice websites have everything they need. In fact, a website that can’t do everything that the patients need could cause the practice to be overlooked entirely. So what do medical practice websites need in order to provide the best possible experience for patients, while helping your business grow? Here’s our checklist that you can follow. Essential Elements for Medical Practice Websites Patient Forms Having downloadable and printable patient forms on your website is an excellent way to save you and your patients a great deal of time and hassle. It can also save you a fair bit of money and help make your operation a little bit more green. News and Updates If you’re not using your website (and your social media profiles!) to post updates about what’s going on at your practice, then you are using your website wrong. If there are any updates that could potentially affect patient care in any way, such as closures, reduced hours, new services, or new staff, it’s on you to update your community. Contact Information A website serves many purposes. Chief among them is passing on information that allows patients to contact you. You should have an actively managed email address, a phone number, a fax number, and your address on your website visible on the footer of every page. Patient Resources Is there anything you can provide to make your patients’ experience better or smoother? Can you provide information or resources for patients that need help? Your website is the perfect place to do that. Services and Insurance You need to make it clear on your website what services you offer. This way you can clear up a great deal of confusion about what you offer. Not to mention, you should also make sure that patients have a way to figure out whether or not your practice accepts their insurance. Testimonials People trust reviews more today than ever. Having testimonials on your website talking about how good of a job you did care for your patients, how good the overall experience was, and how much assistance the staff provided will make people feel a lot better about coming into your practice. Read more: How to Use SWOT Analysis in Healthcare: Steps and Strategies Maps It’s not enough to provide your mailing address: you will want to include a map of where your practice is located in your area. Using a Google Maps plugin is an easy way to do this, as it makes it easy for people to get directions to your practice as well. Social Media Integration Your website and your social media profiles are intertwined, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Making sure that your website and your social media are integrated will make it easy for you to update people on social media about new content or new happenings at your practice. Blog A blog is not just a way to update your patients, but it’s also a way to provide expert knowledge on subjects near and dear to your patients’ hearts. Your practice is in a unique position to provide excellent content that really helps your patients, and your website is a great way to do this. HIPAA Compliance Last but absolutely not least, your website absolutely needs to remain compliant with HIPAA regulations. If your patient scheduling form collects any sort of protected health information (PHI), then your site will need to make sure that the collecting of this information is compliant. Does Your Medical Practice Website Have All The Above? If your site doesn’t have everything, you better make sure to add it. Or, call us at Guideway Care, the healthcare marketing experts. We help medical practices like yours improve their digital presence, make it easier for patients to find and do business with you. Call us today!
How The Health Insurance Verification Process Works Written by Jeff Tormey on May 19, 2020. Posted in Connect. One thing that no medical professional likes to deal with is insurance. Insurance is a hassle, it’s not always easy to comply with, and they have so many different requirements. What’s worse is that it can seem quite mysterious to those who don’t go through the process day after day. We’re here to tell you how the health insurance verification process works, what goes into it, and what makes it operate. What Is The Health Insurance Verification Process? The health insurance verification process is a series of steps that checks whether or not the patient admitted has the ability to make a reimbursable claim to their health insurance provider. The process is complicated and goes through many different people at both the healthcare provider and the insurance provider. Steps In The Health Insurance Verification Process Patient Scheduling The patient makes an appointment with the doctor and the doctor schedules the patient in. The registration can be done through self-scheduling to make the process quick and streamlined. New patients are entered into the healthcare provider’s database. In case of emergencies, the registration may be performed at the hospital where intake happens. Patient Enrollment The patient’s demographic data and medical history are recorded or referenced by the healthcare provider. This is to identify the patient accurately and make sure that insurance has the right patient. Eligibility and Verification This is generally the ugly part. Insurance claim details are then cross-referenced by the healthcare provider to make sure that the patient is, in fact, eligible to make a claim. Since insurance fraud is common, this is a necessary step that healthcare providers have to do. This is where health insurance verification services come in, offering patient conversion solutions that can save a considerable amount of time. Authorization Insurance verification establishes the eligibility of a patient’s insurance claim, but not the requirement of the insurance provider to actually reimburse the patient. The authorization process binds the insurance payer to authorize the claim through a legally binding promise to pay a specified amount. This step should be given careful scrutiny as to prevent denied claims, which can cause a great deal of stress. Here, the Role of a Medical Insurance Verification Specialist becomes pivotal in managing the process effectively. Updating Patient If there are any changes to the claim, the healthcare provider must notify the patient of said changes. This process is important as patients should not end up with a surprise bill at the end of the whole ordeal. Updating Medical Billing System Healthcare providers must update the billing system to make sure that correct charges were recorded. Otherwise, this can have a drastic effect on the organization’s accounting. Claims transmission At last, the claim submission request is sent to the insurance provider. This is the final step in the health insurance verification process. For assistance with any part of this process, Reach Out to us for expert support and guidance.
Why Communication Is Important in Healthcare Written by Jeff Tormey on May 12, 2020. Posted in Connect. It’s no secret that one of the biggest barriers to providing good healthcare is communication between doctor and patient. Without adequate communication, the ability to deliver quality patient care is hampered severely. But why exactly is communication so important, and where do the most common communication issues come from? Common Barriers to Communication In Healthcare Language and Culture It’s pretty obvious that if two people are unable to communicate in the same language, they will not be able to convey complex ideas. But how else does language and culture play into communication? A big part is on the healthcare professional: it’s not uncommon for a healthcare professional to assume that a patient from a different cultural, social, or economic background is less health literate than another patient that’s more similar to them. As a result, they’re not given the chance to take an active role in their own healthcare. The best way to remedy that is to hire staff that are culturally similar to the ethic minority populations of the area, but that might not always be possible. Another way is to train staff on cultural differences. Health Literacy Many patients are not health literate; that is, they do not understand and cannot communicate basic health concepts. It doesn’t mean that they’re not medically trained, as it’s possible to be health literate without being a medical professional. It means that they don’t understand how to take care of their own health properly, how disease and injury happens, or how the healthcare system works. Because most patients are not going to tell a professional that they lack health literacy, an assessment must be done to gauge how health literate a patient is. Unfortunately, these assessments tend to be subjective because of the difficulty of implementing official empirically-based health literacy tests. Improving health literacy in patients requires providing them with multi-purpose education, but that would also require them to absorb said information which is never a guarantee. Patient-Staff Communication It’s not just language, culture, and health literacy that can affect communication in healthcare. If staff aren’t making sure they’re understood when communicating to the patient, then that could cause serious issues in understanding especially if the patient is not health literate. It’s important to train staff on how to properly convey information to patients at all steps of the process. Most importantly, staff must have a way to confirm that the patient understands what is being told to them. The patient must understand their diagnosis and their treatment plan. In Summary Language and culture differences present both obvious and subtle communication issues. Patients with low health literacy are less likely to understand what is being told to them, and work must be done to assess how health literate a patient is. Communication is a two-way street: staff must work to make themselves understood.