How Streamlining Patient Communication Saves You Money

When my daughter was 19, she had her tonsils taken out. Like tens of thousands of other tonsillectomies performed each year, it was a routine procedure that ended with ice cream and lots of rest. However, within a few days, she had developed a fever and started to feel nauseated.

My wife and I decided her symptoms needed more attention than a Google search; we called the doctor’s office and asked for the nurse who had worked with us before the procedure. We were worried and not sure if her symptoms were normal. What ensued was something common in our experience and those of our friends…6 hours of phone tag between us and the nurse with back and forth calls or "patient engagement" for what turned out to be normal symptoms. When we finally were able to connect, the call took less than 30 seconds.  Our daughter was fine even though we were mentally exhausted.

I knew from my 15+ years as a hospital administrator that this inefficiency was a minor inconvenience for me but was probably being repeated with patients throughout the day, every day, and was costing the practice money, wasting precious time, and was a source of frustration for nurses and other employees who get bogged down in phone calls.

There is an easier way to communicate with patients.

PatientOne is a HIPAA-secure automated patient engagement platform offering secure patient communication and remote patient monitoring for medication adherence, chronic care management, and surgical episodes of care. The cloud-based platform and mobile app eliminates the need for back-and-forth calls. Nurses and physicians can assign care plans to patients, send automated messages and reminders, and respond individually as needed.

In addition, conversations are documented and shared between patients and their care team to reduce miscommunication and misunderstanding. With PatientOne, patients can share all their information with family and caregivers, increasing access and accuracy of important health information. Nurses no longer have to listen to long blocks of voice mails and patients no longer have to leave a message after message to get questions answered.

Patient management is costing you too much.

Every practice wants to ensure the safest, best experience for their patients, which often includes personalized communication. For both nurses and physicians, the traditional methods of communicating with patients are not leading to better experiences for patients and instead can do just the opposite and lead to low patient satisfaction and bad social media reviews. Unanswered questions and communication errors lead to unnecessary patient-scheduled visits, leading to lost revenue and increased overhead. Patient One’s automated messaging and tracking system saves time and money on patient engagement, while maintaining the highest level of care and security. 

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How Patient One Can End the Phone Tag and Save Your Practice Money

Using our personal experience with our daughters tonsillectomy, using PatientOne my wife and I could have both received timely automated messages after the procedure regarding what to expect. It would have looked like this:

Text message sent from Nurse June 11, 2019 11:27 AM:

Hi Jeff and family, this is a standard message regarding your daughter’s surgery June 8. Nausea and a low-grade fever are very normal after a procedure like this. If the fever exceeds 100 degrees, or if nausea continues, reach out and/or schedule an appointment here. 

Text message sent from Jeff June 11, 2019 11:31 AM:

Thank you very much. I still have some questions.

Text message sent from Nurse June 11, 2019 11:42 AM:

Absolutely, this is Sam, the nurse who cared for your daughter. What questions do you have?

The back-and-forth communication and missed connections are not unique to my family. Patients are constantly trying to reach their nurse or physician with questions regarding dosage, pre- and post-operation guidelines, what’s “normal” and what’s not, and countless other concerns regarding their individual cases. Automation within Patient One can save health care professionals time, which saves the practice money, allowing everyone to offer better care for the patients.

Want to see what Patient One can do for you? Request a demo by clicking the button below.

Jeff Fee is the CEO for PatientOne. He has spent over 15 years as the chief executive of health systems. Before co-founding PatientOne, he spent the last ten years as the chief executive in western Montana for Providence Health and Services, Western Montana region. Working in the healthcare industry for over 25 years, Jeff is constantly looking at how to improve the communication between the providers and patients--and that’s exactly what he’s done at PatientOne.