In last week's CEO Guest Workshop, Vijay Sammeta, CEO of Civic Foundry, shared eye-opening insights into the IT challenges facing health centers—and the tech expectations patients now have.
Vijay said patients have these expectations when it comes to your health center's patient-centered technology:
🖥️ Online Scheduling: Scheduling appointments online is no longer a convenience - it's a necessity. However, it's also essential to consider: Do you have walk-in hours? Allowing patients to get into an online queue for walk-in hours is critical. Patients expect online queues for walk-ins, whether for virtual appointments or to track wait times.
☎️ Phone Trees: Yes, we want to answer all calls with a live person, but that can be difficult during high-volume call times. Vijay often sees health centers leaving people on hold for 20 minutes or more! People are more likely to tolerate 1-3 minutes on hold, and that's it. Online scheduling will reduce phone calls, and you can shorten their wait time by answering frequently asked questions on the call tree. Things like hours, locations, billing phone numbers, pharmacy refill numbers, etc, will significantly reduce the time people wait on the phone.
⚕️ Pharmacy Refills: By implementing an automated phone refill system, Vijay reduced 300 weekly calls to a health center's pharmacists and staff.
📲 Mobile Apps: Getting more patients on your EHR's mobile app is an easy way to improve patient care and increase patient satisfaction. Are you convinced many patients don't want to log into the patient portal? Think again. Most people would much rather communicate directly with their provider, request refills, view lab results, and get reminders through an app than call your health center. This, in turn, will lower the calls you get.
All health centers want to retain and attract new patients. Upgrading your technology is vital to enhancing the personalized care FQHCs already offer. So, what steps are you taking to meet your patients' expectations?
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