Hospitals and healthcare professionals are increasingly realizing that digital patient engagement and patient activation can influence patient behavior and improve outcomes. Different platforms have been introduced to the market, each bringing a different menu of features and capabilities. As you consider your objectives for patient engagement, and your options for platforms that support those objectives, there are a couple of critical considerations to keep in mind.
Reach & Adoption
Reach and adoption are actually two considerations, but it’s helpful to consider them together. Reach refers to the number of patients enrolled in your platform, while adoption refers to the number of patients active in your platform. To get the best results, your platform should help you maximize both.
What are the common roadblocks? In our experience, the biggest obstacle to improving reach is the enrollment process. You can tell your patients to sign up for your program, but patients have busy lives outside the four walls of your hospital or medical office. Among other enrollment options, UbiCare’s SmarteXp® platform includes an API, which some hospitals have used to tie directly into their scheduling software to auto-enroll patients and more than triple their reach.
Another limiting factor is when hospitals rely on their healthcare portals to communicate with patients. This requires patients to create accounts, log in, set preferences and then return periodically to log into those accounts, read their messages and access useful resources. But that poses a major barrier to participation and limits your reach. In fact, only 30% of patients set up and use their patient portal accounts. Far fewer come back. SmarteXp® can actually help drive participation in a healthcare portal by periodically reminding patients about available resources.
This brings us to adoption. We’re often asked why SmarteXp® is not a mobile app. One reason is that a mobile app requires the patient to download the app onto their smart phone and then check it regularly (again creating a barrier). Another is that not everyone has enough smart phone memory and storage to spare for additional apps.
SmarteXp® uses email and texting to push messages out to patients. Checking emails and texts is something that everyone does naturally – every day. The messages are timed to coincide with specific episodes or milestones in a patient’s care journey. They contain content designed with a mobile-first philosophy to ensure the experience is seamless, easy and enjoyable.
Content
So, let’s talk about that content. The two main considerations you need to consider are quality and quantity.
In a healthcare setting, quality is paramount, and UbiCare leads the way with evidence-based, interactive and customizable content that engages, educates and activates patients to make informed decisions throughout the healthcare journey.
UbiCare’s award-winning content is continuously reviewed and updated to reflect the latest medical research, and our content developers are experts in online communication and engagement. The content is interactive, with embedded video, audio, surveys and alerts.
To say that quantity is also important may sound strange – but think about it for a minute. It’s not about the amount of communication delivered throughout a particular care journey, because that’s dictated by medical necessity and best practice. Rather, it’s about the number of different episodes of care that are supported with content. UbiCare has developed a robust library of Care Suites with content that covers many of a hospital’s most costly and urgent health care episodes.
To help you understand the power and effectiveness of our approach and platform, we’ve created sample series from most of the following programs so that you can experience the platform just as your patients will. If you represent a hospital, and you’d like to sign up for a trial, simply click here and fill out the form (it takes less than a minute), and a UbiCare representative will follow-up with you to set up your trial.
UbiCare’s Library of Care Suites
Maternal & Pediatric Care Suite
- Pregnancy & Early Childhood Series
- Breastfeeding Series (Patient & Staff Versions)
- Autism Spectrum Disorder Series
Surgery Preparation Care Suite
- Joint Replacement Surgery Series
- Spine Surgery Series
- Sports Medicine Surgery Series
- Bariatric Surgery Series
- Planned Hospital Stay Series
Chronic Care Management Care Suite
- Concussion Series
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) Series
- Heart Failure Series
- Teen Heart Health & Obesity Series
- Stroke Recovery & Rehab Series
Preventive Care & Wellness Care Suite
- Population Health Management
UbiCare’s SmarteXp® is more than just a platform for delivering content. Our unique formula combines powerful technology with evidence-based interactive content and actionable data to deliver tools that optimize patient engagement. Sign up for your free trial today, then let’s talk about your patient activation goals and objectives and how UbiCare can help you succeed.
If you want to learn more about the SmarteXp® platform and the evidence-based, fully customizable content that is driving new levels of patient engagement and patient activation in hospitals across the country, submit the form below.
