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Improving patient engagement beyond the walls of a practice

I am one of 22 providers serving patients in both inpatient and outpatient environments at Orlando Internal Medicine. Our practice joins hospitals and health systems in embracing technologies that enable a mobile-first approach to patient engagement.

By inpatient, I mean that our practice includes skilled nursing facilities as well as acute inpatient care. This scope helps us deliver comprehensive care and follow our patients throughout their healthcare journey.

At Orlando Internal Medicine, we acknowledged that healthcare was rapidly evolving, and the shift from fee-for-service to value-based care was going to require rethinking the way we interacted with our patient population. At the same time, we were hearing from patients that they wanted to be more engaged in their care and wanted our providers to be more accessible.

Our patient engagement strategy included implementing technology that would assist us in staying connected with our patients beyond the walls of the office and hospital. We had precise goals for our vendor partner search, knowing that these four key drivers would enable us to take patient care to the next level:

 

  • Utilizing mobile-first technology as a means to engage patients.
  • Closing gaps-in-care.
  • Improving patient care and satisfaction.
  • Driving revenue for the practice.

We did an extensive search in the marketplace for a technology solution that was ideally suited to helping us achieve our goals. Our search led us to Allscripts FollowMyHealth®. It had all the tools we required, and our ROI has been remarkable:

  1. Our overall adoption sits at approximately 86% and our patients regularly comment on the positive changes in the practice.
  2. Approximately 10% of our patients are now canceling and rebooking at a more convenient time for them in advance of their appointment. This enables us to rebook other patients into appointments that otherwise would have been no shows. It also offers patients an easy way to reschedule appointments they were not intending to keep.
  3. We are regularly meeting pay-for-performance incentive bonuses for quality and patient satisfaction.
  4. Our front office staff appreciates the added time in their day to focus on patient experience due to the efficiencies achieved.

FollowMyHealth helps us provide excellent care to our patients, whether they are being seen for well visits, episodic or chronic problems. It keeps our patients engaged by providing them with timely, actionable and relevant communications at the precise moment in care they will benefit most from them. Perhaps best of all our patient satisfaction rate has climbed and it’s easy to see that our patients feel they are truly the centerpiece of the practice.

Patients continuously praise the practice’s transformation because they see how easy it is for them to stay connected with their providers. Physician schedules are full due to the net new appointments and filling of cancelled appointments. Revenue is up and months after a seamless implementation, I remain certain we made the right choice in FollowMyHealth and that it remains the most comprehensive patient engagement solution on the market.

Learn more here.

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