A four-hospital system in the Midwest uses the SmarteXp® patient engagement platform to educate patients for better outcomes. What they’ve found, however, is that patient engagement also has a transformative effect on hospital staff and workflows.

Educating patients digitally and automatically throughout the care episode addresses questions that patients would otherwise pose to their nurses and physicians. That saves those medical professionals time and helps them care for patients more efficiently and effectively.

Read A Case Study in Successful Patient Engagement Part One: Make Digital Education the Standard of Care

Hospitals have long been challenged to reduce costs while improving outcomes. Now, more than ever, they need to maintain high standards for patient experience, while focusing on hard metrics such as readmissions, length of stay, emergency department use, discharge destination and day-of-surgery cancellations. The financial implications of ignoring those metrics are simply too big. At a four-hospital system in the Midwest, the cost of emergency department visits alone ranges from $500–$4,000 per visit.

There, the CMIO was interested in pairing technology with targeted content to improve these metrics. For 10 years, this hospital system had used UbiCare’s SmarteXp® digital patient engagement platform to connect with and educate expectant and new parent patients. Healthcare providers there knew it was effective in engaging this population.

The CMIO saw research that showed the efficacy of digitally educating and engaging total joint replacement patients from pre-op through post-op and was intrigued. He was confident his health system could do even better, by digitally guiding joint replacement patients and setting their expectations before and after surgery.

The latest hospital star ratings, recently released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), include some high-performing hospitals that make patient engagement a high priority. 

Should You Have an App for That?

I talk to a lot of executives and clinicians about engaging and educating patients. They overwhelmingly want to know how to best reach today’s consumers with health information. As I talk about interactive, mobile messaging, a common question is, “Do you have an app for that?”

When thinking about using a downloadable app, the questions I always ask are: Will patients use it? Will it capture their attention and engage them to come back for more next week? Will it be easy for them? With 77% of Americans using smartphones, it’s important to understand how people use apps in their daily lives to understand their potential impact on patient engagement.