Raj Toleti

What does “patient engagement” really mean? To the patient and to the provider?

We use the word engagement to describe the shift from passive spectators to active participants. It’s the difference between lurking on Facebook and actually participating by sharing a picture or commenting on a friend’s post. The difference is participation.

Engagement signals action and results for patients. Most engaged patients have healthier BMIs, take their medications as prescribed, ask about costs, and use tools to actively improve their health outcomes. This level of engagement also directly touches providers, through improved health outcomes and lower costs for the healthcare system; thus, the introduction of Meaningful Use (MU): the use of technology and electronic communications to connect and activate patients, their families, and their care teams. These measures include View, Document, Transfer (VDT), Secure Messaging and Transition of Care (TOC).

Tackling the Two Most Challenging Patient-facing Requirements While it’s no debate that engagement is fundamental to healthcare reform, the fact still remains that MU attestation is often complex and downright difficult to achieve. As the landscape of healthcare regulations and technologies continues to grow and evolve, so too should the ways that hospitals and providers approach Meaningful Use Stage 2 (MU2) attestation.

We continue to hear things such as, "We were pushing to get patients to use our EMR portal, and we've tried to take it to the next level by putting more useful information into it," says Darren Dworkin, Chief Information Officer at Cedars-Sinai. However, hospital systems and providers still struggle to meet two important MU2 patient-facing requirements:

More than 5% of all unique patients must view, download or transmit their health information More than 50% of all unique patients must receive timely online access to their health information. Historic MU Statistics Are Less than Desirable According to statistics released in February 2015, only one-quarter of eligible professionals (EPs) have attested to any of the meaningful use program’s stages for electronic health records. In fact, a mere 4% of EPs attested to MU2. As a result, over 250,000 EPs are being penalized for failing to attest. Penalties range from around $250 to upwards of $2,000. Thirty one percent will lose $2,000 or more this year.

In fact, a mere 4% of EPs attested to MU2. There’s no single answer to why hospitals and providers have so much trouble with MU attestation, but research reveals that it has a lot to do with barriers to technology adoption. Patients just don’t want to go to a portal. In a previous post, I described in detail how and why patient portals are dead .

Meeting Patients Where They Are When we ask why achieving MU is so difficult, the resounding answer seems clear: patients don’t want to be pushed to your portal.They want you to meet them where they are—their smartphones.

We all know that people check their smartphones 150+ times a day. This is where they primarily have conversations about their health. People are open and comfortable with receiving information on their smart devices. 92% of baby boomers engage in weekly texting activities. 98% of people open their text messages within 3 minutes. People are more motivated to take action on this information too, and it shows: text message delivers an 8x higher engagement rate than email.

We all know that people check their smartphones 150+ times a day. Don’t get stuck in the old way of doing things. Mobile enterprise technology poses a bright new opportunity to connect patients and providers. Further, you can turn patients into active, satisfied consumers and MU2 requirements into dollars.

Interested in learning more about CareNotify , our mobile enterprise solution that tightly integrates with your HIS system? If so, email me at raj.toleti@healthgrid.com .

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About the Author: Raj Toleti is an HIT visionary with a knack for building patient-facing technologies that are truly ahead of their time. He is the co-founder and CEO of HealthGrid , the first-of-its-kind mobile healthcare enterprise platform for hospital systems and providers. Raj believes in creating meaningful healthcare experiences at every touch point by meeting patients where they are—on their smart devices. Follow him here by clicking the yellow FOLLOW button or on Twitter @Health_Grid .

Raj Toleti

Windermere, Florida, United States 3K followers 500+ connections

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Andor Health

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