The Human Element at the Heart of Patient Engagement

When you think about adopting the principles of value-based care in your practice, what are the operational needs that come to mind? 

Maybe you think about ways to be more effective in managing population health. Or stronger care coordination. Or making earlier interventions, improving adherence, and getting your patients to do a better job of self-managing their conditions. More use of cost-effective generic and biosimilar drugs, and so on. 

They’re all big challenges for busy medical practices that already have a lot on their plate. Change is hard.

Improving patient engagement may not rise to the level, because while it’s nice to provide patients with more tools and greater convenience, it’s hard to quantify a return on the investment. But the truth is, you can’t move the needle on any of the big imperatives of value-based care, including those outlined above, without better engaging patients in the process and improving the patient experience.

Minimizing distractions

Estimates say that doctors today spend up to a third of their time on tasks like EHR input, prior authorizations, or other insurance-related matters. Job listings for family medicine practitioners now often carve out time specifically for administrative work.

Consider this finding from a 2024 study based on interviews with primary care physicians: 

In an attempt to balance quality of care and work overflow, participants described having to sacrifice aspects of patient care (ie, clear communication, patient education, relationship and trust building, and truly understanding patients’ problems and their social determinants of health) and self-care (ie, time to eat lunch, time to learn, and using their training and skills, such as in-office procedures or motivational interviewing). These physicians’ self-worth, well-being, and work satisfaction were intertwined with these sacrifices in patient care. They described spending quality time building relationships with, counseling, and educating patients as helping them sustain joy in their work and protect against burnout.

Overworked physicians often miss important context from patients such as life events, mental health issues, and other factors, and they have little ability — or time — to look for trends in health data.

To make matters worse, physicians and staff often have no voice in the kind of tools selected to alleviate administrative burden, leaving them with a “technology soup” of solutions that only increase complexity and fuel burnout. 

A different kind of platform, a different kind of ROI

The answer is not simply to continue treating patients as data points or passive recipients of appointments, lab results, and indecipherable clinical messages that only encourage them to tune out — and possibly look elsewhere for their healthcare needs. Nor is it to hand over the keys to the latest AI-powered technology that risks misinterpreting clinical data or removing the essential elements of human compassion and judgment.

Instead, the answer is to employ digital engagement tools that make healthcare more human – accessible, easy, and useful – for patients while helping providers see things through the patient’s eyes. 

When done right, digital patient engagement tools replicate the clinical empathy at the heart of a strong doctor-patient relationship while meeting patients wherever they are, offering a return on experience, efficiency, and satisfaction for both parties. 

Patients find an easier way to view their lab and test results, book appointments, get important health reminders, and communicate with their provider team. 

Providers gain a clear view of a patient’s clinical records, self-reported information, and other context to highlight what’s most relevant, what’s changed, and what needs discussing. They get a concise, meaningful summary that surfaces priorities at a glance, helping them better prepare for in-person patient visits.

By seamlessly automating workflows such as insurance verification and check-ins that reduce staff hours and by consolidating vendor licenses, providers benefit from lower costs. They also gain through improved patient satisfaction scores on NPS and CAHPS surveys that translate into financial benefits. 

It’s how we’ve purpose-built BridgeInteract: to create real value and a return on experience, efficiency, and satisfaction for patient populations and providers alike. If you’d like to learn more, reach out to me here and let me know a time that works for you. Thanks for reading!