In this episode

KLAS Research is a leading voice in healthcare IT, understanding what patients and their providers need and fostering innovation in technology to make it happen. VP of Digital Health and Patient Voice Adam Cherrington leads research into how patients interact with their providers’ healthcare technology. In this episode, he shares recent insights about what patients want from their providers’ digital options and provide a look at what to expect in the coming year:

• Patients continue to ask for self-service options, and make use of them when they’re provided.
• Providers and vendors must challenge their assumptions about what patients will use or how patients might behave.
• Looking at patients’ challenges and feedback can help your organization reach strategic goals.

“You have to ask the patient, and pay attention…Are we bringing our preconceived notions of how healthcare operates, or are we actually understanding the true voice of the patient?”

– Adam Cherrington

Key takeaways

Since 2022, Adam Cherrington has led robust reporting into not just how health systems are adopting available technologies or improving “patient experience” – but how patients perceive that experience and where there are gaps. From this analysis, he shared the following takeaways:

Patients continue to ask for self-service options, and make use of them when they’re provided.

Cherrington shared that in his research, patients are actively asking for the ability to self-serve, not needing to be engaged. “Patients tell us, they want scheduling. They want access to check in. They just want ease of use to to engage,” said Cherrington. “That’s one of the big ironies about patient engagement. Patients are trying to engage. They want it.”

In KLAS Research’s 2022 report “Patient Perspectives on Patient Engagement Technology 2022,” Cherrington and his colleague Dan Czech found that the self-service options offered by healthcare providers often don’t focus on the areas that patients want most, such as self-scheduling or check-in.

Speaking about a simple “pizza tracker” consumer experience for patients, Cherrington said, “For basic stuff, like to communicate that I’m going to miss my appointment, I want the Domino’s Pizza experience for that….we’re seeing some alignment there. [Since the 2022 report] there’s been wonderful progress on things like self-scheduling that are a high priority for patients.”

Providers and vendors must challenge their assumptions about patient behavior.

With KLAS Research’s Patient Voice Collaborative initiative, “we’ve gone from a report to a collaborative, and we’re interviewing patients. It’s a survey where we can compare and benchmark,” Cherrington said. “Now we’ve got data to start challenging assumptions.” Some of the common assumptions about patient behavior that Cherrington mentioned are:

• “‘Older patients won’t use technology’…we have data to show that that’s incorrect,” said Cherrington. “When we look at this Patient Voice Collaborative data, some of the highest-satisfied patients are older.”
• “‘Lower-income patients won’t use technology’…[we found] that they too were rating [patient engagement options] a lot higher compared to patients of a higher income,” said Cherrington. “And when we dove into the comments, [patients were saying] things like ‘This makes a huge impact because I don’t have to take time off of work to go to the doctor.'”
• “‘Not everyone has access to technology.’ We have evidence to challenge that assumption.”

Cherrington continued, “For listeners, I hope [a takeaway is] the next time they’re in a meeting and someone says, ‘Our patients won’t behave that way. They won’t do that thing.’ I hope a yellow light goes up and they say, ‘How do we know that?'”
 

Looking at patients’ challenges and feedback can help your organization reach strategic goals.

Cherrington pointed out that bringing in the voice of the patient can also help improve the staff experience. “[Patient self-service] can be used to reduce the administrative burden on some of these basic things [like] ‘I just need to reschedule.’ That ought to free up more resources for for more complicated things.”

He noted that the same challenges that affect the healthcare organization and the staff experience also affect patients. “Health system leaders, the vantage point is aligned to the organization, like ‘How do I bring patients in?’ ‘How do I get the right revenue mix?’ But from the patient side…if I want a reservation at Emeril’s restaurant, and he’s not available, I’ve still got to eat…[an organization I spoke to recently] realized that they were losing two-thirds of their own patients due to schedule inavailability.”

Cherrington shared an example where the organization addressed clinicians’ hesitancy to open schedules to patient self-scheduling: “They opened up more schedules, more opportunities for patients. Scheduling went through the roof. Patient satisfaction went through the roof. No-show rates dropped. Revenue increased…there’s a lot of synergy when we pause and really address what the patient needs.”