April 12, 2023

Empower Patients with Innovative Technology

A transformation is underway as increasingly more providers offer innovative ways to empower patients in their own healthcare experience. A national survey in 2020 found that 59% of responding medical practices have invested in technology to improve patient engagement, with the understanding that self-care is a critical component of patient-centered care.

Now it’s time to expand empowerment to the entire patient healthcare experience, from preservice to payments.

Empowerment naturally happens when conditions allow people to take actions in their best interest. For patients this means having access to digital tools that make it simple, fast and convenient to complete paperwork, make payments and more.

Technology Puts the Power in Patients’ Hands

Thanks to innovative new technology solutions patients can be spared the time-consuming, and often frustrating, process of filling out pre-registration and other forms on a clipboard in clinic and hospital waiting rooms. Now, digital forms can be completed on patients’ own devices at a time and place most convenient for them.

Such digital forms can be pre-populated with information providers already know, saving patients’ time. This increases patient satisfaction too, particularly when known data is shared with all departments within your system thus sparing patients repetitive (and annoying) information requests.

New OCR (optical character recognition) functionality also empowers patients to quickly and accurately complete digital forms, reducing the administrative burden on staff during the preservice registration process while increasing patient convenience. This easy self-serve technology eliminates common errors that create time-consuming and expensive problems, such as insurance claim denials that result in thousands of dollars in lost revenue and wasted staff time.

Empower Patients to Pay Their Preferred Way

Patients with access to feature-rich portals are empowered to receive communications and make payments in ways that are most convenient and consistent with their personal preferences. Such portals make it painless to set up and manage electronic statement delivery, payment plans, card/banking, digital wallet information and payment preferences. And thanks to more sophisticated authentication methods, patients are empowered to do all of this without the burden of remembering user names and passwords.

Empowering patients to make payments using easily accessible self-serve methods delivers benefits for providers too. Data showed one provider experienced almost a 1,000% increase in payments made within days of sending out a digital bill; and that patients are paying an average of seven days faster, with 40% of payments being made within the first 24 hours of receiving a bill by text and 24% paying within the first hour.

Patients are transitioning from a passive role merely receiving care services to an active role in which they are informed, have choices and are involved in decision-making processes related to their own care. With the help of today’s leading technology solutions, you can extend patient empowerment to preservice and payments—increasing the likelihood of greater patient satisfaction and loyalty, and better organizational outcomes too.