For many years, private practices and clinics have tried their best to draw customers by using classic marketing channels, promotional benefits packages, discounts, and the newest technology on the market. Thus, increasing satisfaction with Customer Service and Customer Experience.
And then came the pandemic which changed the perspective on Telemedicine and how healthcare services can not only be provided by having face-to-face appointments with the patient but also remote using the power of technology not only for private practices but also for public and state hospitals.
Although the pandemic put a strand on the healthcare system it showed that technology has a place in providing long-distance patient care even to those who were skeptical about that before. Not only were a lot of patients able to get the care that they needed at home while not being allowed to visit the hospitals or private clinics, but healthcare providers were able to optimize their workflow, reduce costs, and better and personalize patient care.
After detailed observation and research have been conducted, technology providers and strategists have started not only to improve the technology on hand but also to develop new programs and strategies to increase patient satisfaction, empower and support healthcare providers and their staff, personalize patient care, predict patient needs, optimize the costs and workflows, and also the triage process.
Healthcare providers and agencies were advised to implement a series of new technologies and AI programs. Some of those were used only for appointment management so that patients could schedule or cancel appointments without having to wait long periods of time to reach someone by telephone. These apps were also used to send reminders so that the no-show rate will be reduced. Another series of AI Programs were used for triage, aftercare follow-ups, prescription reminders,and lab results.
Although these solutions provide great benefits for healthcare agencies and their patients it must not be forgotten that medicine and healthcare are very personal subjects that require personalized services and care. Patients can very well assess the benefits they get by using different apps for their care, but they still don`t want to be treated as just app users but as human individuals who need special care and advice.
If used right, technology could be the greatest asset the healthcare system has. But along the process of digitalization and automatization, it is very important to keep in mind that the ones who must implement these changes are the people who work for your clinic or hospital. That means first there must be a support system for the employees to learn how to use these technologies to first of all improve the care they offer and how they use technology to their advantage to deploy different tasks in order to focus on their main tasks and better the overall patient experience. There must be a human-first approach when deciding to implement such upgrades to a clinic or hospital and in most cases these organizations will have to create a change management team, that will lead everybody through this transition.
Some of the benefits may already be obvious to you but just to be sure we will go through them one more time:
Benefits that patients profit from:
Even though a lot of people around the world were skeptical of the use of telehealth before the pandemic, having to go through months of lockdown and restricted access to primary care physicians showed many of them that the use of technology and telehealth brings only benefits to those who used it right. Technology in medicine will not replace the staff and physicians, but it will only help them provide better care for a larger number of patients by using optimization and automatization processes. We can say that the pandemic created the proof of concept for different telehealth solutions and what we just saw is only the begining for how the healthcare system will develop itself in the next decade.
