How Healthtech Businesses Can Improve Their Patient Engagement With Voice Calls
According to a Deloitte-Scottsdale Institute survey of health systems, accelerating digital transformation initiatives and improving patient engagement are the priority goals for healthcare providers. As more consumers continue to take charge of their health-related decisions, investment in patient engagement solutions has become crucial for healthtech companies.
In the survey, 92% of respondents stated that better patient engagement is a key outcome they want to achieve from digital transformation, followed by improved care quality (56%). According to the responses, the digital transformation efforts are primarily focused on three functional areas, namely:
Patient engagement and experience (88%)
IT/cyber (80%)
Clinical care delivery (68%)
Similarly, research by Accenture states that younger generations are dissatisfied with certain aspects of traditional healthcare, They are choosing healthcare providers or platforms that leverage patient engagement solutions to deliver seamless customer experiences.
Read More: Truecaller Elevates Calling Experience for PharmEasy
We can think of two focus areas that entail the future of patient engagement:
Making communication more empathetic, meaningful, and centralized at every touchpoint in a patient’s journey - using the right patient engagement solution.
Enabling easy access for patients or consumers to healthcare services.
Contact Center as the key enabler of patient engagement
Q- What is a possible downside to having too many communication channels (voice call, live chat, SMS, email, push notifications, etc)?
A- Fragmented user experience.
Therefore, centralized and standardized communication is the way forward for purposeful patient engagement. Hospitals, healthcare platforms, and even life insurance companies have started relying on contact centers to integrate disjointed communication workflows. In fact, during the pandemic, contact centers became the virtual frontline and agents the virtual frontline workers.
In an omnichannel environment, contact centers have a critical role to play. They can adopt a patient engagement solution:
To treat, assist and educate patients through and through - from appointment to post-discharge engagement.
To have transparent, meaningful, and timely conversations with patients.
In other words, they can adopt a solution that makes their voice calls trustworthy, transparent, and timely for patients.
The value of verified and branded voice calls in enabling purposeful patient engagement
Patients often don’t answer the calls from healthcare contact centers because:
The caller ID appears suspicious (For example - the Healthcare brand’s name or logo is not visible).
They don't know the reason behind the call (why healthcare contact centers are calling them in the first place).
They fear being scammed by an imposter.
Therefore, you need to make your voice calls look trustworthy, branded, and meaningful so that patients can receive them without any second thoughts. By listing your numbers on Truecaller Business Program, you can display your brand name and logo, verification badge, and business category tag, when calling patients.
You can even customize your caller ID and give patients more context by displaying your Call Reason. A few examples of Call Reason in patient communication:
Call regarding your doctor's appointment
Call regarding your medicine delivery
Call regarding your sample collection
Call regarding your prescription verification
Call regarding your report collection
Key healthcare use cases where a patient engagement solution can leave an impact
1. Appointment scheduling
Suppose a patient schedules an appointment with a physician through a healthcare platform, and someone from the clinic calls the patient to confirm or reschedule the appointment. Now, there can be different scenarios here:
Scenario 1: The patient or consumer doesn’t don’t know who is calling him and why, as the calls don’t carry any identity and context (no brand name, logo, and Call Reason).
Scenario 2: The patient or consumer is resting or busy somewhere. Therefore, he might miss the call.
Scenario 3: The patient or consumer has taken the appointment of another physician, and may not have the intent to pick up the call anymore.
It is crucial for healthcare representatives to differentiate between Scenario 2 and 3, as they may end up calling patients or consumers too many times, assuming they have missed your calls (but who actually don’t have the intent). Too much calling and follow-ups may irritate them and they may mark the call as spam, which is not the ideal outcome for the stakeholders involved.
By augmenting your voice calls with the right patient engagement solution, you can make life easier for both your representatives and consumers. For example, using our Video Caller ID feature, you can add an extra layer of brand identity to your calls with specific use case videos.
With Call Me Back, you can give patients/consumers an option to request a callback (as shown below) if they missed connecting with you on the first instance.
Read More: Have seamless patient communication with our Call Me Back feature
2. Prescription verification
A person orders medicine on a healthcare app but uploads the wrong prescription. A partner doctor calls the patient to clinically verify the order over a voice call. In case the app uses Truecaller Verified Business Caller ID solution, the person will instantly recognize the brand and do the needful.
3. Prescription refill
A person orders a strip of tablets through a healthcare app and consumes the medicine in the prescribed time. The healthcare representative calls the patient (as a reminder) to timely refill the prescription and continue with his treatment. If the healthtech company uses our Verified Business Caller ID solution, this is what the patient will see on his phone screen.
4. Medicine delivery
A person orders her medicine from a healthcare app. It’s a weekday, and she is busy with work and gets a call from the delivery agent for address confirmation. If the healthtech company has enabled our Video Caller ID feature, this is what she will see on her phone screen.
Voice call is vital to quality patient communication. It's high time healthtech companies use patient engagement solutions that advance their communication capabilities and bring more identity, purpose, and context to their patient engagement.
Want to empower your healthcare communication and give consumers a verified calling experience? Reach us at business-outreach@truecaller.com
References
https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-161/Accenture-Digital-Adoption-In-Healthcare.pdf