Suzanne is chief commercial officer of SPH Analytics.

Suzanne Cogan

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Telehealth’s big, shining moment will be remembered as 2020, when the pandemic precipitated a massive, unexpected shift in healthcare models. Telehealth claim lines increased nearly 

% between September 2019 and September 2020, as medical practices and hospitals in coronavirus hotspots were forced to shut clinic doors and address care continuity through remote operations.

Although patients are returning to ambulatory settings, the demand for telehealth is expected to continue in 2021, and potentially grow, as more patients become acclimated to virtual encounters. Recognizing the current trajectory of remote care adoption, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) updated its Clinician and Group CAHPS Survey (CG CAHPS) in response to the large-scale adoption—a movement that has notable implications for payers and healthcare providers.

With CAHPS surveys closely aligned with health plan contracts and compensation, providing a less than optimal experience could be costly. In addition, member satisfaction with telehealth encounters stands to impact customer retention for health plans. For example, a recent 

 found that while telehealth usage is up, a significant knowledge gap exists related to whether these services are available and how to access them.

To remain competitive in the value-based, tech-driven healthcare environment, organizations will need to demonstrate that they are prioritizing patient experience.

Healthcare leaders may be surprised to find that patients aren’t primarily driven to telehealth because of safety concerns.

According to SPH Analytics’ ongoing consumer telehealth survey, which measures healthcare experiences, 70% of patients preferred virtual visits over an in-person appointment to save time. This number was the same in early March 2020 as it was in mid-June 2020, after the first wave of COVID-19 shuttered physician offices in many urban, high-volume parts of the country. What’s interesting is that avoiding sick people in the waiting room was the second-most cited reason among patients who preferred virtual visits. This suggests that while COVID-19 was a catalyst for telehealth growth, it’s not the main reason people continue to seek virtual care.

This data shouldn’t surprise us, in light of the increasing consumerization of healthcare. Adults are accustomed to mobile banking transactions and ordering food through apps like Uber Eats: They want the same convenience in their healthcare experience.

A nursing mom with a high fever and aches associated with mastitis, for example, doesn’t want to have to drag herself to an urgent care center to obtain antibiotics. She’d rather connect with a doctor who can quickly treat her. Likewise, a 50-year-old man in the midst of a panic attack doesn’t want to have to call 911 if he can connect with a behavioral health provider virtually.

Tailoring Telehealth to Patient Preferences

Knowing that consumers prefer fast, convenient telehealth encounters is a good starting point. But curating a satisfying, or exceptional, telehealth experience is a bit more nuanced. Convenience isn’t the only factor that will give a health plan or physician practice a leg up. 

Here are four tactics organizations should consider when building out an experience-driven telehealth program:

The CG CAHPS survey digs into consumer sentiment, along with the telehealth experience, to generate meaningful insights. But there are other ways to gauge consumer sentiment ahead of a CAHPS questionnaire. Asking patients to rate the context of visits (e.g., ease of logging into a telehealth encounter, the professionalism of the on-call nurse) can provide valuable data. A pediatric practice might learn, for example, that parents strongly prefer virtual encounters when a visit doesn’t require a clinician to assess vitals, draw blood, or use an otoscope.

Growing a telehealth platform is more than posting a web link. Consumers need to know that telehealth is available, and why they should use it. An effective messaging campaign should align with communication preferences. Patients under 40, for example, may be more responsive to SMS-based messaging that emphasizes telehealth’s efficiency, while Medicare patients who are high risk for coronavirus complications may need more frequent messaging tied to coverage concerns and disease prevention to engage in telehealth.

Healthcare organizations need to be open to changes that can foster a more positive patient experience. If, say, patients want the ability to connect with clinicians on weekends, when their practice’s office is closed, the practice may want to partner with a telehealth vendor that employs a roster of on-call physicians with flexible hours.

Launching a program isn’t a one-and-done deal. Healthcare organizations should periodically survey their patients (e.g., every three months) to gauge the effectiveness of any changes or to ensure patients’ telehealth needs are being met. They should also analyze data around telehealth usage to see if any trends emerge (e.g., 90 percent of patients seek virtual care between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.).

Laying the groundwork now for a high-quality, high-value telehealth program will offer benefits long into the future. A virtual care program that leaves a lasting, positive impression will be one that consumers return to for years to come.

Suzanne Cogan is chief commercial officer of SPH Analytics.

Articles

How consumers feel about their virtual care encounters will influence everything from CAHPS surveys to compensation beyond the pandemic.

Why 2021 Patient Experience Will be Tied to Telehealth Success 

Crisis situations often unveil the true strength of relationships between healthcare stakeholders. Amid heightened concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers have naturally looked to their healthcare providers and payer partners to help keep them safe, healthy, and informed.

Yet more than half of approximately 600 consumers (52%) 

 in mid-March—the time when major metropolitan areas began issuing “shelter-in-place” orders and encouraging “social distancing”—said they had not been given direct guidance from either their payers or providers regarding the novel coronavirus. A quarter of respondents to the eHealthInsurance survey said they had only received one means of communication, while only one in five said they’d received a few messages. 

That’s a far cry from proactive communication that improves decision-making and fosters trust. What was needed then, with the toll of COVID-19 reaching epidemic proportions, was critical information and guidance. Yet only a mere 4% surveyed said they were receiving daily communications from a payer or provider about the crisis at that time.

Misinformation abounds during a crisis, and lack of expert guidance can lend to confusion and less-than-optimal outcomes. For example, if patients question whether a payer will cover COVID-19 testing or medical care, they may avoid engaging with healthcare professionals at all, and invariably put themselves at risk for an adverse event.

The good news is that it’s not too late for payers and providers to change the current dynamic and information flow and drive meaningful changes—such as behavioral changes—during this or any critical time. There’s also an opportunity to let patients know they are supported and the healthcare community has their back, even when in-person care is not possible.

The importance of leveraging a proactive patient engagement strategy cannot be underestimated, as staying healthy—and avoiding health risks—directly impacts quality outcomes.

But engaging patients in their healthcare is not necessarily an easy task, even under normal circumstances. Physicians are often overworked, and typically don’t have the time to develop relationships with patients as meaningfully as they would like to or allocate more than 15 minutes for acute care visits.

Providers are finding themselves especially challenged this spring—especially if they underestimated the swift spread of COVID-19—and are now scrambling to implement effective communications tools and issue guidance. In early March, a high number of physicians 

 that the current COVID-19 status has had a severe impact on their practice: They felt overwhelmed by patients’ virtual questions and encumbered by the stress of limiting routine, in-person care.

Similarly, payers are overwhelmed because they need to make difficult coverage decisions quickly and be as transparent as possible to members. According to the eHealthInsurance 

, nearly seven in ten members (69%) said they lacked a basic understanding of how their insurance coverage works for coronavirus.

What the industry needs now is swift, decisive and smart action. Payers need to refine communications and engagement with members, especially those with high risk factors for COVID-19, such as seniors who need dialysis, or those with underlying conditions such as lung disease. To do this, health plans can employ the following strategies:

 of more than 80 providers and health plans found that 35% of payers and 24% of providers highlighted the “willingness to collaborate” as the biggest challenge to working together. With the urgency of COVID-19, providers and health plans need to share data and regularly discuss their response, coverage and treatment approaches. Data should be readily available and easy to access at all times, as new information becomes available, and care plan modifications become necessary.

Engaging all patients is a difficult task, and the healthcare community is already stretched thin. Solutions such as predictive analytics tools can make a huge difference by enabling physicians and payers to filter and stratify patients based on clinical risk level, social determinants of health (SDOH), and even level of engagement in the patient’s own health so that outreach can be personalized and made more meaningful to individual patients. 

These technologies leverage algorithms that predict an individual’s likelihood of engaging in their health based on predictive engagement indices and different modes of communication (e.g., SMS alerts, email, phone calls, etc.). They can also be used to determine which higher risk patients are underserved (e.g., 

 with more than two comorbidities) and require more frequent engagement and intervention.

The best way to fine-tune engagement efforts is through understanding how messaging and information delivery is impacting patients, especially during this pandemic. One way to do this is through online healthcare surveys, which can give payers and providers insight into how patients are faring physically and emotionally. Survey data can help payers and providers understand focus areas of highest priority. Both national surveys measuring the sentiment of health care consumers across the country as well as surveys of a health care organization’s own patients/members can be extremely valuable during the pandemic to help inform how to engage at this time.

Taking a proactive approach is essential because things are changing every day, if not every hour. Healthcare leaders have one of the most important jobs in the world, in ensuring patients are kept up to date on best practices, especially as guidelines, such as the 

, change or evolve. Forward-thinking health plans and providers are wise to consider how to advance communication strategies through advanced tools. Better collaboration, smarter outreach and purposeful follow-up promote trust by ensuring consumers stay informed, healthy, and engaged.

More than half of approximately 600 consumers (52%) surveyed in mid-March—the time when major metropolitan areas began issuing “shelter-in-place” orders and encouraging “social distancing”—said they had not been given direct guidance from either their payers or providers regarding the novel coronavirus.

Suzanne Cogan

Articles

Why 2021 Patient Experience Will be Tied to Telehealth Success

How Proactive Patient Engagement Can Influence Patient Health During COVID-19