Quick Tips to Improve Patient Engagement

How healthcare providers are adapting to digital patient engagement—Atrium Health allows patients to choose how they prefer to be communicated with, which increases their engagement with practitioners.

With so many changes in healthcare in the last year, it’s no surprise that providers are learning how to best engage with patients digitally. The DOCPACE team is always looking for best practices across the industry and is driven to help our clients improve their engagement with patients. HIMSS is an incredible resource of up-to-date content about the healthcare industry. We had the pleasure of tuning into their latest webinar on “How Atrium Health is Growing Patient Relationships through Digital Engagement,” which was fascinating. Atrium Health is a massive organization with over 70,000 employees, 42 hospitals, and 1500 urgent care centers across the Carolinas and Georgia.

The Senior CRM strategist, Lakisha Holloway, laid out how Atrium has been increasing patient engagement through email in a fascinating way - Atrium sends all patient emails at the times when a patient is most likely to open them. Their CRM enables them to customize their drip campaigns in such a way that they can ensure that an email will be opened and engaged with. Another key takeaway from this webinar was that Atrium puts their patients in the driver’s seat of their communication by allowing patients to dictate how they would like to be communicated with and what type of information they would like to receive. They have found that giving patients this control makes them more likely to stay engaged with their practitioners. In addition, we have been hearing other news from across the country about providers increasing their engagement with text messaging. SMS is one of the most accessible communication modalities - and patients who don’t have access to a smartphone are still able to engage. 80% of patients prefer reminders by text message, which is a staggering statistic!

• Optimize when you send email and text communication to patients

• Let patients choose how they prefer to be communicated with

• Utilize text message reminders instead of phone calls

If you’re interested in learning more about how DOCPACE can help you automate and customize your patient communication, we’d love to help.