Happier Patients, Better Outcomes

All healthcare providers strive for clinical excellence. Accurate diagnosis and effective treatment is, after all, central to every healthcare provider’s value proposition — as is the age-old mandate to “do no harm.” 

But as healthcare delivery becomes increasingly complex, and competition for healthcare dollars intensifies, providers need to do more than just deliver great clinical care. They also need to optimize the patient’s experience of that care. 

In fact, evidence shows that an enhanced patient experience pays off in three ways:

1. Better clinical outcomes: A patient’s emotional state can significantly affect his or her health. One University of California-Los Angeles study found that surgery patients treated at hospitals in the top quartile of patient experience had a substantially lower likelihood of death and complications. 
2. Improved operational efficiency: When patients are comfortable in their environment and can communicate clearly with hospital staff, they are less expensive to treat. 
3. Greater revenue and growth: Pleasant hospitals are popular hospitals. According to research published in the American Journal of Medical Quality, hospitals in the 90th percentile of patient experience saw patient volume increase one-third over five years. Those in the bottom 10th percentile saw a decrease of 17 percent. 

“Patients expect to receive care as easily as they book a flight or manage their finances,” says Craig Richardville, CIO at Carolinas HealthCare System. “Convenience and ease are vital to serving patients.” 

Multifaceted Digital Engagement 

To achieve consistently superior patient experiences, healthcare institutions must develop a culture of open communication and individualized attention across the board, from doctors and nursing staff to administration and food service. 

But digital technologies also play a vital role. Those technologies include: 

Electronic health records: EHRs help hospitals improve the quality and efficiency of clinical care. They also support improved patient experience. Patients have much more confidence in the care they’re receiving when they know hospital staff can see all relevant information about their condition and treatment. By sharing EHR data with each other, healthcare providers also spare patients the aggravation and anxiety that occurs when it seems like multiple specialists don’t know what the others are doing. 

Patients also want to view their health records themselves. Doing so helps them feel more in control of their own care — increasing their comfort with an otherwise opaque and disconcerting process. 

On-premises mobility: Thanks to mobility, doctors and nurses can now walk into patients’ rooms with all the information they need at their fingertips. They can also capture data for immediate, reliable entry into EHR systems. This mobile-enabled care has a positive effect on both clinical outcomes and patient experience, since caregivers can see more patients sooner — so patients spend less time waiting and worrying. 

With the right mobile apps, patients can also keep an eye on the progress of their care — and their billing — from their personal mobile devices. They can manage nonmedical services such as meals and TV. And they can stay in touch with friends and family. These capabilities contribute to a greater sense of personal well-being. 

Telemedicine: Remote telemedicine tools enable hospitals to extend their reach and leverage their clinicians’ most specialized — and thus rarest — skill sets over a much larger set of patients than physical travel would allow. 

Telemedicine also lets patients receive care at home or at work, where they’re more comfortable. By using wearables, hospitals can track patients’ heart rate, blood pressure and other vital signs after they’ve been discharged. New “smart pill” technology even enables hospitals to ensure that patients stick to their medication regimens — an especially high-stakes issue in situations such as post-transplant organ acceptance. 

“Opportunities to treat patients where they live, learn and play continue to expand,” says Pamela Arora, senior vice president and CIO at Children’s Health in Dallas. “By capitalizing on those opportunities, we can deliver better care to more children at lower cost.”

Infrastructure Matters 

Hospitals can only deliver great patient experiences if their digital infrastructure is sufficiently robust to support digital innovations — of particular importance are: 

• Hybrid data center capacity: Massive volumes of data, images and video place intense demands on servers and storage. Given limited on-premises data center space and capital budgets, hospitals must maximize their capacity through technologies such as virtualization and converged systems. The cloud can also provide much-needed capacity on demand. 
• Wired and wireless networking: Robust network infrastructure is essential for making sure both clinical and patient-facing services perform acceptably. No hospital can afford to have its doctors and nurses waste their time waiting on a slow or failed network connection. And few things are more frustrating to today’s digital-native patients than bad Wi-Fi. So hospitals must upgrade their network infrastructure to support high data volume and real-time video traffic. 
• Multilayered security: Medical facilities face a major challenge in protecting patient data. Many healthcare networks face the added challenge of keeping patient data secure even as they connect with smaller independent medical practices that aren’t especially sophisticated when it comes to IT. 

These are all tough challenges that require significant investment. But if hospitals fail to make these investments, they’re likely to see outcomes erode, readmissions increase and lifetime patient revenue decrease. The wiser choice is to do what it takes to make patients happy, streamline service delivery and build a differentiated institutional brand. 

“EHR, imaging, social media, actuarial data and other artifacts of our pervasively digital world are empowering healthcare providers to create fully personalized experiences for patients in real time,” says Severence M. MacLaughlin, master data scientist with global consultancy Cognizant. “Those who take advantage of this wealth of data will significantly outperform those who don’t.”