Utilizing mHealth to Turn the Customer into a Sufferer

Maryland's MedStar Health is utilizing a digital health platform to greet and involve its sufferers, both new and returning.

With the understanding that a customer’s 1^st encounter with a healthcare contributor is the most significant, MedStar Health is contributing in a digital health stage that generally upgrades the conventional sufferer portal. The platform handles consumer access across various channels, from the call center to the online scheduling network, enabling both contributor and sufferer to find the best care pathway.

 “mHealth is less about doing a sexy, cool application in comparison to about offering a service to our sufferers no matter where they are,” states Mike Ruiz, the non-profit, ten-hospital network’s vice president and chief digital officer. “What we are doing is giving a (platform) that aligns with what are sufferers are searching for.”

MedStar is part of an increasing wave of health systems searching to spruce up the front door, and they are utilizing mHealth to make that happen. By interacting with customers before they reach the doctor’s office, clinic or hospital, contributors are looking to develop a relationship that lasts – generally turning the customer into a sufferer who will keep coming back when he/she requires healthcare.

It is a 2-way street. By linking at home, through online portals and mobile-optimized sites, the customer can register for an upcoming visit at his or her ease, answering queries and filling out forms that would otherwise have been done in the long waiting room. The health network, meanwhile, utilizes that information to fill out the EHRs, so that it knows exactly where that sufferer should go and what resources to give for that visit.

The platform also acts as a type of match-maker, Ruiz states. While sufferers can select and book appointments of doctor to fit their schedules, the stage determines what site and which clinician would be best for new sufferers, referrals and follow-up care. In essence, they will come through the front door and know really which room to visit, instead of waiting around in the hallway or wandering by the cellar door.

“We are aligning the correct sufferer with the correct skillset,” he states. “I consider this is something that the healthcare industry has long struggled with, and we have been working a long period to try and solve things out.”

“Doctors do not need to be put in the position where they have to tell someone they are not in the correct place,” he further adds.

To help roll out the welcome mat to clients, MedStar is joining hands with Kyruus, a Boston-based developer of sufferer experience devices and services. The company is familiar in healthcare circles, having joined hands with the likes of Partners Healthcare, Swedish Health, Mercy, Providence Health and Services, Houston Methodist and Keck Medicine of USC.

Ruiz claims the consumer engagement platform is well-developed in other industries, like banking and the airlines. It is taken little time, he states, for healthcare to recognize it has to engage clients before they reach the hospital, instead of merely wait around and do entire essential stuff once they get through the door.

“Healthcare has various rooms to catch up,” Ruiz states. “We’ve a great, long journey ahead of us.”