From large hospitals to specialist clinics, healthcare providers work hard every day to help patients heal. One of the biggest hurdles medical staff in all departments face is patient preparedness and education, but a simple shift made possible by modern automation is dramatically improving the status quo, and having added benefits for healthcare providers.
In astudypublished in the American Journal of Medicine, the Cleveland Clinic examined how patient preparedness impacts patient outcomes in its gastroenterology department. They found that “unsatisfactory bowel preparation has been reported in up to 33% of screening colonoscopies.” With up to ⅓ of screenings being impacted by poor patient preparedness, a solution was desperately needed.
“Unsatisfactory patient preparation affected up to 33% of screenings, dramatically impacting patient outcomes.”
The team identified “patients’ lack of understanding about how a good bowel preparation can be achieved” as a major cause of such low rates of patient preparedness. Today’s digital tools like Zappix Digital Patient Engagement deliver a complete solution that enhances patient communication at every level. Healthcare providers can provide patients better, more engaging, and more informative educational materials to make sure they’re properly prepared for every kind of appointment. These modern, digital communication tools transform patient outcomes and integrate with the tools staff already use quickly and easily.
Study Results
The team at the Cleveland Clinic launched a new initiative to improve patient education. Leveraging digital media like educational videos, the Clinic delivered enhanced educational materials to patients beyond the standard paper handout. Over the next four years the Clinic saw this enhanced education system improve patient preparedness and help patients completely understand the importance of colonoscopies, as well as how to properly prepare for a screening.
“The Cleveland Clinic found that when patients were shown the educational video, 93% properly prepared for their colonoscopy screening, and their need for a repeat screening within 3 years was 2x lower than for patients who didn’t see the video.”
After four years and thousands of patients working through the new digital education process, the Cleveland Clinic found that when patients were shown the educational video, 93% properly prepared for their colonoscopy screening. A marked improvement over the pre-digital patient education process, these properly prepared patients usually ended up having better patient outcomes as well. The Clinic found that when patients hadn’t viewed the enhanced preparation materials, the need for a repeat colonoscopy within 3 years increased by 2x.
Complex preparation techniques or multi-step prep procedures can drastically reduce patient outcomes. Thankfully for modern healthcare providers, digital channels and today’s automated platforms help patients come to appointments more prepared than ever.
A Modern Solution
The conclusion is clear: going forward, healthcare providers that want the best outcomes for their patients should incorporate rich, informational, digital communication into their patient preparation and follow-up processes.
The ZappixPatient Engagementsolution helps healthcare professionals deliver the exact kind of engaging, informative information to patients need to find more successful outcomes. Zappix automation makes connecting patients to the information they need to succeed fast, simple, and without any burden on staff. Engagement campaigns deploy automated reminders to educate patients at exactly the right time without pulling staff away from important medical duties. By increasing patient preparedness and reducing the bureaucratic burden on staff to continually check in on patients, Zappix technology improves patient outcomes in multiple ways.
The Digital Patient Engagement solution is a complete solution enhancing patient communication at every level. On top of patient preparation and targeted messaging, healthcare providers are benefitting from deploying automated patient engagement for other stages of the patient journey. Medical professionals have seen various benefits from deploying digital patient engagement:
- Increase revenues through loss avoidance— interactive digital patient engagement reduces no-shows with proactive reminders and pre-procedure guidance that make sure patients are prepared for visits
- Free up staff for more productivity— shift bureaucratic burden from staff to automated solutions to engage patients, update databases, and convert more referrals
- Reduce rescheduling through improved preparedness— get more thorough education into the hands of patients including photos of necessary purchases, videos explaining key details, & written materials
- All without disrupting staff schedules/hospital operations— the system launches in under four weeks with zero learning curve for staff, delivering results quickly and easily
By transforming patient communication from paper to digital, healthcare providers can improve patient outcomes in 2021 and beyond.
Digital Patient Engagement
Learn more about how Automated On-Demand Apps, Visual IVR, and No-Show solutions, as well as proactive outreach capabilities improve quality of care, increase clinic efficiency, and achieve better business results:
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