The digital front door. It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard used often in the healthcare sector over the past few years and it isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. The HIMSS Global Conference and Exhibition (HIMSS 2019), kicking off this week in Orlando, will bring together healthcare IT leaders from across the country who are looking to throw open that digital front door.
To learn more about HIMSS 2019 and the challenges surrounding the digital front door, we spoke to Michele Perry, CEO of Relatient and Trevor Brown, Vice President of Business Development for Relatient who offered insight into the healthcare IT strategy of digitization. “The digital front door is about helping healthcare providers meet expectations set by the other industries patients interact with daily. It’s about creating the same experience in healthcare for patients.”
Brown explained that, in the digital age customers have been conditioned to expect quick and easy access, often via mobile platforms, to information and services.
“Historically healthcare has not done a great job delivering this kind of experience,” Brown said. “Patients want to know why, in healthcare, it’s so difficult to schedule an appointment, pay a bill online, or even access your own records” he continued. “We need to open the digital front door for patients so that accessing care and delivering a quality experience is easy, this will bring enormous benefit to patients and providers.”
With healthcare IT, providers can achieve this for their patients and practices, creating a better patient journey. “We’ve started the transformation and I think you’ll see more and more of this patient-centered communication coming out,” said Michele Perry, CEO of Relatient. “You’ll see more bots, you’ll see more AI, you’ll see other technologies like that, which will allow us to really focus on the patient and make it easy for the patient to do the hard part of getting to the doctor, getting their data, staying on care plans and everything that goes along with it.”
For those looking to better the patient journey, HIMSS will be a valuable venue for gaining insider knowledge. Speakers including Tanya Andreadis, Chief Marketing Officer for Penn Medicine, and Andrew Watson, Vice President of Clinical Information Technology Transformation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, will be sharing their insights into customer experience. Session topics include elevating the patient experience through digital transformation and next-gen digital engagement through mobile platforms.
Opening the digital front door is made possible by digitally transforming and implementing management platforms that offer mobile usage to help providers retain current customers and build their practices. “It’s all about access and ease of operations. We live in such a fast-paced world that we have been conditioned to expect things quickly and easily and that’s what this is going to allow providers to do,” said Brown. “Down the road, we view this front door as not just access to a practice, but to the entire patient journey.”
“It’s easy to forget at times what the purpose of healthcare IT is when there are so many innovative solutions hitting the market at the same time,” added Perry. “For all of us in the field our primary job and that of the technology we’re invested in is to make the patient journey better, which, for me, means being respectful and responsive to the individual patient and prioritizing their needs so that taking care of their health is simple,” concluded Perry.
HIMSS 2019 will be packed with industry speakers, new technologies, and insider tips. Don’t miss it! Become a HIMSSider today.
