Merely 2% of sufferers in the 100 greatest hospitals nationally are utilizing hospital-provided mobile health apps, costing each of these healthcare agencies considerable lost revenue, in accordance to new study from consulting firm Accenture.
While 2-thirds (66%) of the nation’s greatest hospitals have mobile apps for customers and roughly 2-fifths (38%) of that subset have established proprietary apps for their sufferers, only 11% of these health networks offer sufferers proprietary apps that operate with at least one of the 3 functions that customers demand most: approach to EHRs; the capability to book, change and cancel appointments; and the capability to appeal prescription refills electronically.
When it comes to functionality, Brian Kalis, managing director in Accenture’s health practice discloses that the great majority of existing hospital-provided apps had “bounded to no functionality” of those significant capabilities. Additionally, Kalis reports that the usability of these apps suffered as they were “often hard and cumbersome for persons to use.”
As a result, Accenture discovered that 7% of sufferers have switched healthcare contributors due to a poor experience with online consumer service channels, like mobile apps and web chat. In accordance to the firm’s analysis, this turning could translate to a loss of more than $100 million in yearly revenue per hospital.
“While contributors are making an attempt to meet consumers’ expectations, their responses to date have been inadequate,” states Kalis. “More than half of health customers would like to utilize their smartphones more to communicate with contributors. But, they are displeased with the present deficiency of mobile services. Having a mobile app overall is not enough to meet those demands.”
He discusses that hospitals require focusing on delivering exceptional user experiences and functionality to meet sufferer demands for digital engagement. One way to do that, Kalis contends, is to partner with “digital disruptors” in the commercial health apps market like Good Rx, ZocDoc and WebMD that are famous with customers.
A comparison of contributor apps versus commercially available apps through the Google Play and iTunes app stores drives home the point, in accordance to Kalis. Hospital apps had an average 3.6 rating (out of 5) and more than 7,000 downloads. Although, ZocDoc (for sufferer scheduling) has an average rating of 4.5 and more than 300,000 downloads, and iTriage (for symptom and health queries support) has an average rating of 4.5 and more than 1 million downloads.
“Mobile presence and capabilities can help contributors succeed in a period of individualized healthcare, where sufferers are empowered to assist manage their own care,” claims the Accenture report. “Moreover, by not having solid mobile engagement strategies, contributors are ceding a portion of the sufferer experience—and potential revenue streams—to digital health disruptors that growingly provide competing products and services.”
For its part, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s access is a combination of apps and adaptive design sheets—web pages that automatically resize/reformat to whatever mobile device sufferers are utilizing. In accordance to CIO John Halamka, MD, presently 80% of all approach to BIDMC's publicly present websites is conducted via mobile platforms and 25% of its sufferers use PatientSite/OpenNotes, which is what he calls a “mobile friendly” website.
PatientSite is a protective website where BIDMC sufferers can manage their healthcare online, anytime from a smartphone, tablet or PC, involving requesting a prescription/referrals as well as scheduling/cancelling appointments. And, via the OpenNotes initiative, the medical center became among the 1st in the country to enable its sufferers using PatientSite to read the healthcare notes their clinicians write after an appointment.
“I believe if Accenture considered that hospitals may be providing mobile friendly websites which produce a user experience nearly identical to apps,” inquires Halamka.
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