“Healthcare providers could be generating significant new revenue by improving patient engagement. Perhaps more importantly, they can be gaining the skills, capabilities and technology experience they will need in order to capture the greatest benefits possible from future value-based care contracts and models.”David A. Gregory, Principal, Baker Tilly
Value-Based Care: Patient Engagement
Helping healthcare provider organizations design and execute purposeful, data-driven patient engagement programs that allow them to take control of their own destiny as they move towards greater adoption of risk-based contracting.
Value-Based Care: Patient Engagement
David A. Gregory
Principal
Michael J. Patti
Principal
Mark Ross
CPA
Partner
Evaluating your organization’s care delivery models is critical to meeting your value-based contracting (VBC) performance, quality and outcome metrics. Is your organization ready?
Improved patient engagement will drive enhanced revenues in today’s fee-for-service environment. It will also prepare your organization for success in a VBC world.
The stronger your relationship with patients, the more likely they are to choose your facilities and your care continuum. In today’s largely fee-for-service environment, that means improved revenues and utilization. It also means better health outcomes for patients.
Nevertheless, most healthcare organizations are struggling to move beyond simply sending out appointment reminders and mass marketing material. They recognize that they do not know their customers well enough to develop the type of personalized, interactive and outcome-oriented relationships that are required to be successful in a VBC environment.
Five key considerations
- Make it meaningful: Understand who your patients are, how they want to communicate and what messages they need to hear in order to influence the behavior you require. Do everything with intent and purpose; do not waste opportunities to collect feedback and inspire interaction. Engage patients across the full continuum of care.
- Leverage technology: New tools and technologies offer health systems the ability to vastly improve the patient experience and communication. From patient-facing technologies such as patient portals and texting, to systems designed to map the patient pathway and identify opportunities for improvement, healthcare providers will need to consider how they can use new technologies to better engage patients.
- Master your data: To understand and engage your patients, you first need to understand your data. Providers should be focusing on building their analytics capabilities on two fronts to improve patient engagement: better identifying opportunities for proactive intervention in patient health, and better personalizing outreach and communication. Both will require a level of predictive analytics capability.
- Continuously recalibrate: Recognize that the journey towards a high-functioning patient engagement capability takes time and incremental growth. Learn from every interaction. Be purposeful about building in measurements and feedback tools to ensure that, with each iteration, your organization is improving their capabilities and their understanding of the patient and patient pathway.
- Stay one step ahead: While most health systems will continue to earn most of their revenues through fee-for-service models for the foreseeable future, remember that it takes time to build relationships and patient engagement. Balancing the timing of investments into patient engagement technologies with the shift in business models and revenue streams will be key.
“If you want to be a leader, you can’t just sit back and wait for patients to arrive at your door. You need to be out there engaging your patients at a personal level. It’s not easy; it requires a fundamental change in the patient relationship and the business model.”Michael Patti, Principal, Baker Tilly
Two minute self-assessment
Ask yourself whether …
- Your health system regularly reports on all relevant data points on patient safety and quality, including preventable admissions, readmissions, ED visits, mortality rates, complications, infections, etc.?
- You have implemented new chronic disease management or population-based care delivery initiatives to prevent future hospitalizations?
- You have the right data, skills and analytics capabilities required to move from general marketing to personalized, targeted patient interactions based on specific care outcomes?
- Your organization regularly uses patient engagement strategies such as shared decision-making aids, shift-change reports at bedside, patient and family advisory councils, motivational interviewing and/or health and wellness programs?
- You know your patient population well enough to start taking on greater risk in your contracts?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions – or if you just don’t know the answer – you may not be ready to assume the risk required to successfully move towards value-based care. Talk to us to find out how you can become ready.
“Current patient engagement strategies need to be evaluated and aligned to the future goals of the organization to encourage effective patient participation in cross-continuum care programs. The goal is to increase the flow and communication of data with the patient – making the patient-provider relationship less transactional, more consistent and outcomes-focused.”David A. Gregory, Principal, Baker Tilly
How Baker Tilly can help
Baker Tilly’s team of Value Architects™ provide management consulting, technology and financial planning for healthcare organizations across the health plan, provider and life sciences spectrum.
We know how to bring together vast amounts of patient and market data to help healthcare providers get a clear picture of their patients and their patient pathways across their care continuum. We use these insights to help our clients design and execute purposeful, data-driven patient engagement programs that allow them to take control of their own destiny as they move towards greater adoption of risk-based contracting. No matter where you are on the journey towards VBC, Baker Tilly professionals know how to drive patient engagement.
Contact us today to find out how Baker Tilly can help your organization.
“You really want to improve your patient engagement capabilities today with a view towards getting to a point where you can start to control your own destiny as you move towards risk-based contracting.”Todd Wilkerson, Director, Baker Tilly
