Primary care panel management can be a time-consuming and challenging task. It requires efficient coordination and communication to ensure optimal patient outcomes while maintaining practice operations. However, technology offers a solution to enhance panel management efforts significantly.
Let's look at five key ways technology plays a vital role in panel management.
Key #1: Prioritize the Patient Panel for Proactive Outreach
In an ideal world, healthcare would be accessible to all patients at all times. However, the reality is that the healthcare system faces limitations. Patient panel prioritization is crucial in delivering quality care through proactive outreach. By evaluating clinical needs, urgency of care, and resource allocation, healthcare providers can optimize their efforts and ensure timely interventions.
Panel management technology can help your practice prioritize patients for outreach based on factors such as:
Care and Coding Gaps: Leverage advanced analytics and algorithms to identify patients with care and coding gaps. By addressing preventive screenings, chronic disease management, and specific interventions, you ensure proactive and targeted care to bridge those gaps. Prioritizing these patients leads to better health outcomes.
Chronic Diseases: Efficiently identify and prioritize patients with chronic conditions. Technology enables remote monitoring, telehealth consultations, and automated reminders, ensuring regular follow-ups and personalized care plans for these patients.
Time Since Last Appointment: Identify patients who haven't visited your practice in a while. Technology helps track the time elapsed since their last appointment, triggering reminders for check-ups. By reaching out to these patients, you prevent potential health deterioration.
Time Since Last Outreach: Strive for balanced patient outreach. Utilize technology to keep track of your last communication with patients and systematize outreach cadences. By considering this approach, you can ensure appropriate timing for follow-up outreach.
Key #2: Enable Multi-Modal Outreach Sequences
Traditional call-only patient outreach has its limitations, with call volumes overwhelming both practices and patients. Leveraging technology for multi-modal outreach sequences, including text messages, allows for increased engagement rates, higher patient compliance, and more convenient communication with patients.
Panel management technology can help your more effectively connect with patients through:
Convenient Channels: With call volumes already overwhelming many practices, it's challenging to reach every patient. Moreover, patients may not always be available to talk via the phone during typical business hours. Text messages, as an example, have shown incredible engagement rates. Did you know that text messages have an average 97% read rate within 15 minutes of delivery?
Automated “Drip Campaign” Follow-Up: It's crucial to follow up with patients to ensure they receive the care they need, but all too often, outreach efforts end with a single voicemail. This is where automation comes into play. By leveraging technology, we can ensure consistent and proven outreach occurs, even when staff resources are limited.
Studying What Works: Technology provides the opportunity to pinpoint best practices in patient outreach. By utilizing a library of proven outreach sequences, healthcare providers can study and analyze the effectiveness of different approaches. A/B testing becomes feasible, allowing for continuous improvement in preventive care outreach strategies.
Key #3: Leverage Bi-Directional AI Conversations to Scale Care Coordination
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a game-changer in healthcare, particularly in care coordination efforts. AI Conversational technology allows for efficient handling of patient responses, saving valuable staff hours and improving the patient experience.
Panel management technology can utilize bi-directional AI conversations to provide:
Automated Response Handling: Managing patient responses efficiently is crucial, but let's face it, our staff can't spend all day waiting for replies. That's where AI Conversational technology comes in, empowering you to handle those responses effortlessly and save valuable staff hours.
AI / Human-in-the-Loop Workflows: Especially in healthcare, it's important to have a "human-in-the-loop" when dealing with important care support workflows. This ensures that your staff is promptly alerted to jump into the conversation when a human touch is required. This way, you can strike the perfect balance between automated efficiency and personalized care.
Recommended Responses: Generative AI can help interpret patient responses and provide recommended responses, saving staff valuable time and effort!
Of course, not all patients have the same preferences or situations. That's why including calling features is important. It allows you to support patients who prefer voice conversations or need sensitive and nuanced discussions. By offering multiple communication channels, you ensure that everyone receives the care they deserve.
Key #4: Configure Your Preferred Network to Navigate and Retain Care
Retention is a no-brainer strategy for both fee-for-service and value-based care contracts. It drives revenue, lowers costs, and improves patient outcomes.
But how can technology enhance downstream retention? Let's explore:
Set Up Your Preferred Network: Technology allows you to configure a preferred network of low-cost, high-quality, and strongly coordinated providers and facilities. This curated network ensures that your patients receive exceptional care aligned with your organization's values.
Convenient Scheduling with Network: Using software, your practice can facilitate scheduling at preferred providers. This is a win-win-win, with patients getting the preventive care they need, providers keeping care within a coordinated network, and payers getting high-value care!
Key #5: Track Scheduling Rates to Continuously Improve Panel Management Efforts
As the saying goes, you can't improve what you don't measure. Effective panel management requires a deep understanding of your patient population, their needs, and the effectiveness of your initiatives.
By leveraging panel management technology, you can continuously improve panel management efforts to improve practice performance and patient outcomes. Let's take a look at some of the ways technology can help:
A/B Campaign Structures: Understanding what resonates with your patients is vital for meaningful engagement. Utilizing panel management technology allows you to A/B test different patient outreach campaign structures, narrowing in on the messaging and approach that works best for your unique patient population and goals.
Monitoring Quality Metric Improvement: Gone are the days of relying solely on past performance to gauge future outcomes. With advanced panel management technology, you can now look forward and forecast performance, enabling you to identify panel management initiatives that will significantly improve performance in the current and upcoming year.
Understand Financial ROI of Panel Management: Cost-effectiveness is crucial in healthcare. Panel management technology provides you with granular appointment scheduling, care gap data, and cost-saving insights, giving you a clear understanding of the financial return on investment for your panel management efforts.
Embracing panel management technology empowers healthcare providers to drive better patient outcomes and financial success, elevating population health initiatives to new heights.
In conclusion, by adopting technology in panel management efforts, healthcare providers can proactively prioritize patients, optimize outreach strategies, and improve care coordination. Leveraging AI and multi-modal communication ensures efficient engagement, while technology-driven care navigation enhances patient satisfaction and financial outcomes. Panel management technology provides data-driven insights to continuously improve patient care and practice performance, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes and a more effective healthcare system.
Stay tuned for more valuable insights and strategies to optimize your panel management practices. Together, we can revolutionize healthcare coordination and improve patient outcomes with the power of technology.
Interested in learning more about HealthHelper's Panel Management Platform and care coordination services? Check out this HealthHelper explainer video, or schedule a meeting with us!
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