This blog series from Yosi Health will explore the ins-and-outs of identifying the best patient intake solution for your healthcare practice. Not all patient intake solutions are created equal, which is why it’s important to know about different program features, functionalities, and what to look for.
Let’s Look at Point of Care Hardware Companies
That Poorly Pivoted to Offer Virtual and or Remote Solutions
Healthcare organizations have a reputation of being slow to adopt new technologies – even when innovations are available that could vastly improve the patient experience. It took a pandemic to be the catalyst that would accelerate the modernization of healthcare practices across the globe.
Of these innovations, contactless patient-intake solutions were one of the most visible and widely rushed to market. They popped up everywhere but it’s extremely important to know that most of these solutions were quick-fixes created in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. But there was one solution that’s been available for quite some time – and had already established a proven track record of usability and reliability. And that’s Yosi Health.
Yosi Health was founded in 2015 with the primary goal of improving outcomes for both patients and staff by delivering the first, safe, remote, easy-to use contactless virtual waiting room. With a focus on maximum patient engagement, we developed and brought to market the first, pre-arrival digital solution – as our core competency – years before the pandemic.
Then 2020 came and Covid-19 struck. Crowded waiting rooms, point of care kiosks, tablets, and old fashioned clipboards presented a significant risk of spreading contagions. Providing a safe experience for patients, throughout the care continuum, became a necessity that dramatically altered the landscape.
Most, if not all, practices recognized that to retain their customers they had to quickly pivot. The goal was to move their registration process out of the waiting room. Alerted to this need, many point of care hardware companies accelerated their development of an integrated, remote intake workflow – facilitated remotely, primarily by their customers’ cell phones. The best-case scenario, their patients would now be able to complete their registration digitally – remotely and safely.
Some of the major point of care focused companies that delivered pharmaceutical marketing ads on their tablets and kiosks quickly pivoted to offer digital pre-arrival and seized the opportunity to deliver pharma marketing ads directly to the patient’s cell phone as well. It’s one thing to see a pharma advertisement on a kiosk or tablet in the waiting room – but getting a drug ad generated from a text message from a doctor on one’s own cell phone is an entirely different experience. Most patients don’t want Pharma ads appearing during or after their registration process – whether it be at point of care or remote – Pharma ads simply don’t deliver the best patient experience. This is something Yosi Health determined early on in the process and is why we don’t disrupt the patient intake experience with intrusive advertising.
Pre-Arrival Intake/Registration vs. Point of Care
There are at least four reasons pre-arrival intake trumps point-of-care registration.
- A Better Patient Experience: Most poor reviews heaped upon health care organizations have very little to do with the quality of care the patient receives. The majority of complaints focus in on the patient experience leading up to the point where they receive care. When executed properly, an automated digital experience allows the patient to complete everything in the comfort and privacy of their own space when they have focused time before they arrive. All the paperwork is completed and there are no unpleasant surprises when they show up for their appointment.
- Pre-Arrival Registration Leverages Contemporary Consumer Behavior: People have a sacrosanct relationship with their cell phone. They are extremely comfortable and grateful to be able to register for care on a well-designed application.
- Time Savings for Both Patient and Practice: Because all of the paperwork and patient registration requirements are completed prior to the patient showing up there is significantly less time spent in the waiting room, and on average this digital experience affords an addition 7 minutes per patient with the provider.
- You have one chance to make a first impression: Onboarding a patient is their first experience of any practice’s continuum. For healthcare organizations this means making your first impression, the patient intake process (and follow-up procedures) as frictionless as possible.
Core Competency – Remote vs. Point of Care.
Building a platform for a piece of dedicated hardware is very different than building an application that can operate on all of the mobile networks. At Yosi Health, our core competency has been on providing a safe, mobile, pre-arrival solution, from the start. We understand that taking advantage of the flexibility from the latest technology available our platform is designed to quickly meet the custom needs of each individual organization. Being mobile focused, our solution can expand the scope of our products and services as mobile technology evolves.
Conclusion:
For obtaining the best digital registration/engagement platform it’s important to know if the platform is built around remote engagement from its beginning or if it’s an ancillary solution quickly put together on a legacy platform. You need to evaluate how the solution enhances the patient experience and will it be able to grow as your practice and the expectations of your patients grow.
