One of the biggest challenges, but an even bigger opportunity for healthcare professionals, is to understand how to keep patients engaged throughout the duration of their episode of care.
Providers should value high patient activation, because patient satisfaction and position outcomes directly correlates to how involved they were in their care. By leveraging the right patient engagement tools, providers are able to digitally connect with their patients at strategic points within their care.
This blog discusses how to engage patients in their healthcare with an intuitive digital engagement tool, and how to ensure your organization is getting the most out of your investment.
Build engagement around the patient’s goals
In the pre-op phase, it's beneficial for patients to establish their personal recovery goals which might be returning to work, living independently, or returning to a certain hobby they enjoy. Whatever their goal is, can influence their recovery journey from start to finish, and paves the critical milestones to be completed to reach the end goal. From 2020 to 2021, Force has seen a 45% increase in patients reporting reaching their recovery goals.
Patients can regularly track their progress towards achieving their goals. Research shows that tracking progress towards a goal increases the probability of achieving it, and goal achievement is the greatest predictor of patient satisfaction. As patients track their progress, we update providers to support shared decision-making. Goal setting and progress tracking kick-starts gamification in Force, incentivizing them to continue to engage and make progress in their recovery.
Encourage engagement through gamification
When it comes to progress, we have found that patients who are given incentives and rewarded for their accomplishments are ultimately more likely to log in on a normal, consistent cadence. The patient-facing visual chart on the Force Therapeutics platform, offers a 30,000-foot view of their progress and breaks down recovery factors such as improvements in pain, range of motion, and mobility (i.e. steps per day). In addition to the breakdown of progress, there is a display of awards that patients can achieve throughout their episode of care.
Gamification encourages patients to remain consistently engaged and motivates them to take on a more active role in their own recovery. Patient activation, in combination with highly engaging digital tools can lead to higher patient satisfaction, more comprehensive data collection and ultimately to better outcomes and care redesign.
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Create a cadence of engagement
Creating a cadence of engagement not only lays the foundation of expectations for the client, but holds them accountable. In the calendar view of the patient Task List, patients are able to preview a month's duration of tasks ahead, including PROs at the appropriate frequency and intervals, timely education, exercises, interactive classes, and critical data points such as range of motion and pain level.
Managing patient expectations is a crucial step in preoperative strategy to ensure that patients are well-prepared and well-educated on their upcoming procedure and recovery journey and can lead to higher patient satisfaction post-op.
Ensure each interaction is valuable to the patient
In a traditional setting, patients receive a stack of pre-op preparation and recovery information, including exercises that should be completed. This transaction is impersonal and leads to unnecessary confusion, readmissions, and clinical leakage. Personalized engagement on Force’s digital platform is uniquely crafted for each individual and is delivered to patients in a digestible way.
For example, the Task List (below), which provides a list of tasks rather than a calendar view, provides a digestible overview of daily tasks, features patient-centric language, introduces due dates to manage expectations, and gives patients the ability to prioritize their tasks and navigate as they please.
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Provider visualization
Providers can monitor how patients are doing in real time via the provider platform through engagement data, and patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) administered through the platform.
The image below provides a look into a provider’s dashboard, where they can see individual pain levels, number of logins, and care instructions/exercise videos viewed, all in real-time.
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Force Therapeutics vs Care Companion
So, how does Force Therapeutics go to bat with our competitors when it comes to patient engagement? Over the last several years, we have analyzed the market, listened to prospects and clients, and conducted an honest assessment of what sets us apart from the rest, along with what our competitors such as Care Companion by Epic are similarly offering.
Comparable patient-centric features
Communication portals
There are various patient centric features that both Force Therapeutics and Care Companion offer, such as messaging to their providers, mobile apps, and pre-op patient optimization alerts. These are essential features that every digital care platform should have, to provide patients with easy access to their portal and bridge communication with the care team.
Pre- & post- op digital navigation
The resurgence of patient volume from the COVID-19 backlog is beginning to overwhelm hospitals and clinical teams know they have to do more with less resources in order to reduce last-minute cancellations, prevent unnecessary post-acute services, and avoid post-op complications
Now more than ever, a digital navigation solution brings necessary relief to time-intensive, yet necessary tasks that the care team are traditionally in charge of completing. Force Therapeutics and Care Companion both offer digital navigation solutions.
Force Therapeutics patient-centric differentiators
Virtual education
What we see as a differentiator for Force Therapeutics, is our platform’s ability to proactively engage our patients, and integrate individuals into the care team, as an active member in their recovery. Virtual education such as personalized home exercise video and virtual joint class encourages meaningful engagement, and therefore, a quicker recover and improved outcomes.
Research has been published proving that a well-prepared patient before surgery is more likely to have a better functional outcome, positive experience, and shorter hospital length of stay (vs. an unprepared patient).
At the same time, there’s increasing pressure for systems to hit certain joint class attendance criteria for CMS reimbursement and Center of Excellence consideration. This is how our multifaceted tool goes beyond just a communication platform, and becomes an extension of your care team to prepare patients for success.
AI-Powered Patient Pathways
AI integration continues to be a big focus for our platform. When a patient is onboarded, they go through a series of questions that determines whether the individual is low or high-risk for readmission according to our data-backed, predetermined indicators, and their pathway is automatically adjusted. Providers have the ability to monitor the patient’s recovery in real-time by utilizing the provider facing dashboard.
Surgeon Directed
Although our AI-powered patient pathway and immense collection of outcomes data pave the initial care plan for patients, every healthcare organization and provider needs personalization. That’s why our platform is surgeon directed, allowing for intuitive customization through our remote care builder functionalities. Remote care builder consists of a clinically-validated library of customizable protocols, exercise videos, and care instructions for providers to choose from. This content is developed by a team of clinicians, graphic designers, and product experts dedicated to building and maintaining patient education.
Patient Support & Onboarding
In addition to the digital platform which offers daily guidance, education and access to communication, we have a dedicated team at Force Therapeutics that directly supports patients, reducing call volume.
Our Client Success Managers work with the care team to configure customized Force patient & provider experiences, and continue to optimize the platform for the team based on the needs & goals.
Intelligent Care Plan
In traditional pre- and post-op care, a multitude of exercise-regimens, instructions, and information can overwhelm patients. They often forget or misplace instructions from physicians that are essential to a smooth recovery.
Force Therapeutics provides a digital tether to the patients to integrate the necessary information from physicians to the patients to ensure that their recovery is simplified and quick.
As many aspects of the medical field are becoming more centered around technology, it is important to understand the value of engagement on an online platform and the countless advantages it has on a patient’s recovery.
When it comes to choosing a digital care platform in such a competitive space, we want to help guide you to the best solution for your organization. If you’d like to learn more about our Intelligent Care Platform and how it can be structured to fit your needs, book a demo, and we will be in touch.
