Effective Patient Engagement Strategies w/ Lisa Blue

Erik Sunset: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome back to the DocBuddy journal. I’m your host, Erik Sunset. This is episode 47 of the show. And today we’re joined by Lisa Blue. Lisa is the chief of clinical innovation with Provider Tech. She’s also a registered nurse with clinical experience ranging from acute care all the way out to FQHCs.

Erik Sunset: And if you’re not already familiar with Provider Tech, I’ll give you the 30, 000 foot overview. Provider Tech offers technology solutions to address the complexity of scaling patient engagement while improving operational efficiencies. Lisa, thanks for joining us.

Lisa Blue: Thanks so much for having me. I’m glad to be

Erik Sunset: It is my pleasure. Obviously, patient engagement, being able to drive efficiency is huge as we’re closing out 2023 and starting to look towards 2024. A lot of healthcare organizations having to do a lot more with less than they’ve ever had in terms of staffing. So, really excited to get your [00:01:00] perspective on what Value Provider Tech delivers to its clients.

Erik Sunset: And I think in terms of the best place to start, let’s talk about patient engagement. What do you think some of the best strategies are to have effective patient engagement?

Lisa Blue: Yeah. So, you know, patient engagement is really what I would describe as step one in the, clinical care, clinical care process. So, you know, getting, communicating to the patient in a way that is valuable to them that it’s time to reengage with care. So that doesn’t sound like. Your past due for this, right?

Lisa Blue: Shame is not a motivator. It doesn’t sound like even just, it’s a, even just a general reminder generally isn’t enough. So thinking not maybe what the organization might convey, but what matters to the recipient. And so if I’m a parent for example, and I receive a message about the importance of my child’s [00:02:00] well care and how it might’ve. affect their school performance. That’s a much more engaging type of outreach than just your past due or it’s time for little joey’s visit. So, so thinking of the recipient, the intended recipient and what’s going to be most valuable to them is really, is really foundational to that. When we talk about patient engagement there’s really a very strategic way that we that we approach that.

Lisa Blue: And that’s really one of the aspects that we, that we incorporate when we’re trying to engage a specific population.

Erik Sunset: Well, that’s so important too, because you’re, you’re a nurse, obviously among many other hats that you wear. So being able to engage patients, get them back to the practice and ensure, do everything that you can to ensure that they have a great clinical outcome is number one. Don’t want to view medicine as a production line or as a facility where you’re stamping out patient visits and then off they [00:03:00] go.

Erik Sunset: But there is a revenue cycle management component to this as well where highly engaged patients, obviously, they’re coming to the facility for care to get that better outcome. But surely that revenue cycle aspect is meaningful to your clients as well.

Lisa Blue: Yeah, absolutely. know, even those that are led to provide care to care for patients in their, their own careers you know, certainly the. You have to have a successful business to be able to do that. And so, so patient engagement, you know, while clinical outcomes is the, the driving force behind that, the, the, the revenue that it generates is, what, what keeps the lights on, so to speak.

Lisa Blue: And, our, our patients to our clients to normally take care of. You know, those patients were outreaching to, but, but all of the patients in that practice. So certainly that, revenue cycle will always be an important of [00:04:00] the the engagement itself. And so, you know, thinking about the the different. Ways you would engage a population. So, you know, I talked a little bit about the value already. Why does it matter to me as the patient, but you know, the, the other aspect is, you know, really being as specific with the population as possible. So one thing that we’ve done with our clients is, you know, you know, these patients that are due for cancer screening, for example maybe there are, there’s a subset of that population that was due was seen in the past year, but they just didn’t get that cancer screening order. Perhaps they had other things going on on the visit, right? Likely. And so maybe they just need a little nudge. Maybe they need a reminder that we can send them a kit directly to their home, or we can generate a, a rec to have a memo completed. Something like that versus a client, a patient who hasn’t been seen at all. They do need to come back in, right? They, they need to re engage with care. there’s, [00:05:00] there’s really two levers there when you’re thinking about the, all of those are encompass the clinical outcomes, but there’s still revenue there when there’s a visit associated with as well.

Erik Sunset: Yeah. And that’s that’s easy to lose track of when you’re day to day in a practice, you know, you do have to make money to keep the lights on but patient outcomes primary, of course. I want to go back to one of the things you said to start off our chat, that shame is not a motivator. And I certainly, certainly don’t think that the, the bulk of the practices and even, you know, I’m a healthcare consumer myself.

Erik Sunset: We all are to some extent. When you think about an appointment reminder or a proactive appointment reminder to get you back to the practice. It’s really easy to say you’re overdue or you have an appointment on such and such day. I would imagine that when you’re working with clients, you’re looking at large slots of data out of their EHR, out of their PM.

Erik Sunset: So to be able to move [00:06:00] away from the shame motivation or just the time based motivation, which may be a gentler way to put it, What are some of the pro tips that you would have to actually do that segmenting out of the software either that you provide or that a practice would already have because that specificity is how you drive action, correct?

Lisa Blue: That’s exactly right. So what we generally do is we work with our clients to understand. Yeah. What are their, their clinical quality priorities within their population? Usually that’s driven by things like, you know, their attorney or internal quality initiatives. They might have targets for a specific that, that are priorities to them.

Lisa Blue: It might be driven by their value based contracts. It might be delivered by different Certification organizations like the Joint Commission or N. C. Q. A. So we really work with them to help prioritize what are those targets and then create an engagement strategy around that. And so you’re [00:07:00] right. It isn’t it isn’t about waiting for that patient to be past you.

Lisa Blue: It’s thinking about how do you proactively look at that segment of the population that needs that preventative care, that chronic care and how do you to it. Really continue to communicate with them ongoing in a way that’s meaningful to them, but still drives those, those clinical outcomes at the practice level.

Erik Sunset: That makes a lot of sense and we, I’m going to try to put you on a soap box here as much as you want to be, but when you look at the, the overall state of the average American’s health. Not great. I mean, we’ve seen the news. There’s like you mentioned, chronic conditions, some self inflicted, some not, some unfortunately inherited.

Erik Sunset: I would imagine that proactive communication is pulling a lot of weight into helping people manage their health positively versus waiting for a big problem to occur.

Lisa Blue: Absolutely. So from, from [00:08:00] very basic wellness principles, right. You know, being active and being mindful of, of what someone eats and medication adherence for those that do already have chronic conditions. Those are really very important things to consider communicate to patients in a way, again, that, that they understand the value to them. you know, there’s, there’s also a bigger picture approach to that. So I was just talking to a client that we worked on a lung cancer screening project with, and lung cancer is. It’s the, the, there’s more lung cancer than breast cancer, colon cancer, and I think cervical cancer combined, I think is what he shared with us and a much lower rate of screening.

Lisa Blue: And so just like other types of cancer, those cancers that are found earlier are much easier to be treated and managed. So. [00:09:00] So it really is about helping people understand what, what part they they play in that. But, but again, helping them understand if they’re, if they’re feeling okay right now that doesn’t mean that there’s not still risk, right?

Lisa Blue: And so if a patient is. someone who’s at risk for lung cancer, for example. What we did is we did some outreach to them and we said, you know, you are it’s recommended that you have lung screening and here’s what this is and here’s how you do it. And here’s why even if you have no symptoms today, now is the time to do it. you know, while that seems probably like an describing it, that’s really one of the core tenants to communicate. it effectively to keep it very simple. So people understand the, the information that is being delivered to them or being recommended that they engage in this care.

Lisa Blue: So, so being really simple and consumable with information, [00:10:00] oftentimes in healthcare, we. Well, meaning I’m sure we provide patients a lot of information. We send them home with you know, folders when they’re being discharged from the hospital with all these handouts or, you know, even if we send things electronically, you know, it’s in a.

Lisa Blue: A patient portal, will they be able to find it? Will they be able to log in? Who knows? And so being our approach is, is really the flip side of that. Instead of overwhelming them with information you know, what is the most succinct way and consumable way I can convey to the recipient or our team can convey to the recipient how important it is that they, you know, come back in for that screening or that they you know, follow through with.

Lisa Blue: You know, taking their their diabetic medication. know, I think chronic disease is we, we often, even in healthcare, I think we make assumptions that people with a chronic condition, they understand that chronic condition. [00:11:00] So if they’ve been, you know, diabetic or had high blood pressure oftentimes that’s not the case.

Lisa Blue: And because chronic disease has such far reaching implications to a person’s overall health. Right. Diabetes affects everybody’s system. Hypertension affects everybody’s system. you know, helping people understand the, the, you know, just even certain aspects of it. If they’re having some of these symptoms related to you know, high blood sugar, low blood sugar. They could be struggling to manage, you know, their, their disease process. And so using tools like that to make it more relevant to the recipient. So for example, diabetes, we’ve done some outreach that says, you know, in the last seven days, have you experienced any of these symptoms that might be associated with high blood sugar, such as da, da, da.

Lisa Blue: Right. And we use that when I was still in, in my last clinical role, my team and I did outreach and what was really interesting is so many people responded [00:12:00] timely because they didn’t understand that those symptoms they were experiencing had anything to do with their diabetes. so what really is happening there is very powerful because one, we’re doing really meaningful education they’re highly engaged because they’re understanding, I, I probably do need to get in.

Lisa Blue: It’s not them telling me now. I understand why I need to have to go in and see my provider.

Erik Sunset: That’s that’s powerful to me too, you know, I’m trying to get you on your soapbox talking about the state of the average American’s health and so much of it you know, the spiraling out of control is just a lack of autonomy and a lack of ownership over your own outcome. Certainly go see your provider.

Erik Sunset: Certainly take what you’re prescribed. You need to adhere to your medication, but that’s not all there is to it. There’s your day to day choices and the things that you choose to do that impact your own health.

Lisa Blue: Absolutely. You know you know, I, I mentioned just a little bit Nutrition, all of those things, I [00:13:00] think they’re often underplayed in health and, and health maintenance are, you know, really the, it’s the big story. That’s where the big story is. So, you know, there’s, there’s been, I think some, advancements in terms of things like adoptions of Fitbit and things like that.

Lisa Blue: I think it helps people. Start to pay more attention to that. So certainly that’s a step in the right direction, but that’s still a small segment, you know, in terms of the population and, you know, to, to best support them. You know, I, I think the, I come from a clinical background that has spent some time in public health. So, you know, we dealt with a patient population that had a number of barriers to even accessing care. And so it was a really interesting experience in my own. clinical career [00:14:00] to start to understand what those challenges were and, and what our patients were facing. How to even, you know, take a few steps back in terms of what we were asking them to do to engage you know, how to, how to anticipate those and and make it a little bit easier for them to engage with care.

Erik Sunset: Well, and everything you’re saying around being able to engage patients and then for them in turn to engage with their care, I want to zoom way out and go back in time a little bit to the the advent of meaningful use, where for those who aren’t familiar, you have to either buy or use an EHR and use it how Medicare says, or you get less Medicare reimbursement.

Erik Sunset: That really drove us towards the state of digital health today. I mean, I think it’s safe to say providers would still be on pen and paper. And many of them still are even at the ASC, you know, your surgery centers, but your inpatient care, your, your ambulatory practices, essentially digitized. I think we can safely say that.

Erik Sunset: But the type of segmenting and type of data mining that you’re describing, it’s [00:15:00] not possible without digital health. I mean, what are you going to go flip through a thousand paper charts and figure out who’s diabetic and who’s not? There’s no way. So everything you’re describing is not possible without meaningful use kind of kickstarting us down this road, kicking and screaming, and in some cases, rightfully so, but when we talk about that That type of a law, it’s sort of that forced adoption where providers still don’t like it almost universally.

Erik Sunset: This is one of the goods that came from Meaningful Use, though, is being able to look at data at scale, right?

Lisa Blue: Absolutely. Right. When we like, you know, like you said, we’re going to do you know, a thousand charts, even auditing 10 charts, right? I’m, I’m from the clinical times where we still audited charts. And so I understand the, the painful and the slow process, of that. certainly that isn’t something that, Okay. Would allow us to do any of the things really we’re talking about, because, you know, even some of the early days where we put patients into [00:16:00] you know, these different registries, that was, you know, sort of the, the early days, you know, a, a diabetic registry or a cancer registry, it was still something that was manually. Managed patients were added to it or removed from it. And so, you know, clunky to say the least. So, so certainly being able to at big data across the population you know, not just say, know, what percentage are patients have a chronic condition, but How many have we seen in the last 12 months?

Lisa Blue: How many have we seen in the last six, three, what percentage are controlled? Those are really, that’s really powerful information, not only from patient engagement, but, you know, overall practice management, right? When we’re, when you’re talking about having a practice with a hundred providers and you can look at, you know, this, this practice teams, clinical outcomes, you know, their, rates of, of or control of those populations are a little bit better. Well, good news. What are you doing? [00:17:00] Right? Like what, what best practices can, can we share with the broader group? And, you know, I think those are things that help really move healthcare forward. It does help by having that degree of transparency that paper charts would not allow us to have you know, and also to, to really allow us to, to gain, you know, across the industry from some of those best practices.

Erik Sunset: Hey, you’re so right about all that. And I’m traditionally pretty tough on legacy health IT on on this show. And I’ve, I’ve been on that side of the fence. I don’t know if I shared that with you. I’ve worked at, you know, the traditional health IT vendor and EHR PM. So I know they’re doing everything they can, but usability, just.

Erik Sunset: quite there. So we’ve got to give credit where credit’s due that that amount of data being collected, even if the physician and the providers don’t necessarily enjoy it, does yield benefit. And I

Lisa Blue: Right.

Erik Sunset: think this is an [00:18:00] interesting turning point in the conversation too. We talked about meaningful use. It wasn’t on our run sheet, but it just can’t help but creep into some of these talks.

Erik Sunset: But to turn us a little bit towards value based care. I know that’s near and dear to your hearts. How would you assess the current state of play? What are the opportunities for practices? What are you seeing on that front?

Lisa Blue: I think value based care is certainly something that of utmost importance to our health care system. I would like us to move toward it more broadly and more rapidly. So, you know, we’re still doing it in a very segmented way. So I mentioned before, you know, one of our strategies working with clients is to understand what are their priorities based on their value based contracts.

Lisa Blue: And so that that can be difficult to manage in a practice if you have value based contracts with different payers and they all have different targets, [00:19:00] right? As a provider, how do you know what to focus on? And so I think that and there are some tools that are coming out to make that. A little bit easier for practices, across their, their contracts. So while it’s really important, I think it’s incumbent upon the people that are designing those programs to it just like I’m talking about, making it easy to adopt for patients. It has to be easy to adopt for the people that are rendering the care. so, you know, there can be some ideas on how do you do that. You can look at a practice and say, you know, based on you know, the 2024 calendar year and Medicare patients, these are going to be the measures that we’re going to target, right. Based on Medicaid, we’re going to target these having that uniformity, I think would be really helpful to help practices.

Lisa Blue: My, my own experience with the managing a care team where [00:20:00] we had all of those different value based contracts in a large practice, or we’ve had over 100, 000 patients. And so trying to remember. You know, this plan, this is their focus in this plan. This is their focus. So I think that uniformity really does matter.

Lisa Blue: You know, even if you did it at the like at the government payer level, like I’m suggesting, so all of that said, I think the The people that went into health care, this is the type of care they, they want to deliver. And so I think that it’s, it’s really a win across the board. I do think that our tools like our EHRs need to be better adapted to again, make it easier for our, our practitioners to, If, know, my MA or someone on my team is entering that information it should be very readily available when I’m, you know, seeing that patient. I, I think the, the tools can be fine tuned. I mean, I, I think they, they have [00:21:00] come a long way. Certainly, I do want to give credit where credit’s due, but I think we should be, I think we should continue to push them to be better. I also think one other area that’s going to be really important, you know, you started off this talking about, we’re all doing the same or more with less resources. so the, effectively. render value based care or any care that feels meaningful to the patient population that’s receiving it. it’s going to be really important for practices to to what is available. And so using the team that you have. is going to be important. So if you have nurses on your team or health coaches on your team, behavioral health, whatever those resources are, what things can they do as part of that, that care that don’t all fall onto the providers to do list. I think that it’s not [00:22:00] possible for providers to do everything we asked them to do in a short span of time. You know, not only I’m sure do they leave feeling frustrated at the end of the day, but it also impacts the patient experience versus if we have that patient in the office and they’re seeing their provider, they’re able to meet with behavioral health, they’re able to you know, meet with the nurse on the team and, and really leverage all of those resources to provide that more robust care. I think that is a way that’s the only way that value based care is, is going to be meaningfully delivered.

Erik Sunset: And to build on that and take us in a slightly different direction, you mentioned you can’t pile all of this onto the provider. And I’m paraphrasing, that isn’t exactly what you said. But it seems like in a, in this idealized world where value based care is distributed across the different stakeholders in a given patient’s care in a meaningful and equitable way, That at the surface sounds like a way to reduce the feelings of [00:23:00] burnout that our providers and our healthcare workers at, at large or feel, I think that’s the case

Lisa Blue: I think that yes the short answer, yes. But again, I think the tools have to be really tuned in to allow them to do that. So, you know, there are, for example, most EHRs have That’s a great question. And I think it’s important to have different notifications that say, you know, this patient is due for XYZ when they’re in front of you.

Lisa Blue: They’re those, those notifications are not always as accurate as they could be. And then, you know, the, the care team can either have notification fatigue and maybe they don’t even, they’re not even now paying attention to that. And so things like that, when I’m talking about tuning in are, are I think going to be really, really important. Because when we talk about all the technology or all of the information, the big data that exists. It [00:24:00] is a a possible task to, you know, be able to connect those systems, whether they’re at the enterprise level of a large hospital system that has ambulatory care within it you know, connecting that to the state health information exchange.

Lisa Blue: We know that those things already exist today. so. It’s, it’s important to make sure we’re maximizing those, right? We’re not just like, yes, we have this flow of information. So we’ve sort of checked that box. But you know, how do we ensure that if the patient received this care outside of our, you know Ecosystem you know, it’s, it’s somewhere else that has been reported to the, the state health information exchange that that flows back in. So I think those are the kind of things that EHRs and, and, and other technology tools can help really aid in value based care, as well as reducing the, [00:25:00] the, the burden of, you know, those, those manual tasks.

Erik Sunset: that’s the final frontier for meaningful use. And obviously the frontier will continue to evolve, but our high tech act got everybody digital, but the meaningful actionable interoperability data points just. I know there’s a lot of smart people working on it, but that’s kind of the next phase where I think the next big step forward will be taken.

Lisa Blue: Yes. Yes.

Erik Sunset: And kind of speaking of an innovation like that, I’ve given myself a really nice segue here for once. Lisa, what are, what are you seeing on the horizon for some of the biggest tech innovations that will impact patient care in 2024? AI

Lisa Blue: So I, of course, have to speak to AI because it’s something that is, you know, always the on everybody’s radar to some degree. And, you know, I, I think that I. I myself am an early adopter when it comes to [00:26:00] technology. I think that we need to leverage all the tools that we have available to us. That said, we have to do it in a way that makes sense game.

Lisa Blue: And so, you know, when I think about something like AI, there are, there are so many things again are still done manually and, and. Cause a burden on the limited resources that we have. So, you know, using. AI even internally in a practice to help a a provider and their team look at a patient holistically and, you know, make recommendations, not just, you know, let me fill, refill this medication you know, that we prescribed last time but really looking across that, that entire patient profile tools like AI. Okay. could really help [00:27:00] across that large data set and, and really help the provider you know, in, in that decision making and recommending, you know, the best way to, to manage those patients. And so I think that, you know, you know, still people have some anxiety around it. So, right.

Lisa Blue: I’m not saying that we use AI in all instances, but I think it’s, you know, starting to develop a strategic approach and say, where are the opportunities are things that, you know, we’re still doing manually that we’re, you know, expecting our teams to still do manually that, you know, you know, certainly has never been efficient. But now we’re at a place where it’s not even possible with the, you know, the shortages that exist today and that really are going to continue to be exacerbated in our lifetime. To, to leverage tools like that to, you know, really manage all [00:28:00] of this data that we have available to us for improved outcomes.

Erik Sunset: is really interesting to me. There’s a number of applications, I guess, that it has slotted itself into. You’re seeing some things where rather than having a provider or somebody at a clinic or at the hospital replied to a patient portal message, you could have an AI chat bot, something like chat GPT.

Erik Sunset: You’re seeing NYU has their NYU Tron, which is giving structure to scans charts, like making that a part of the big data silo. That’s really cool. To me, when you have EHR vendors, even implementing chat GPT into their core EHR to assist with documentation, we’re starting to push up against the provider a little bit in some cases.

Erik Sunset: And I, this isn’t the state of play for AI and large language models like chat GPT in healthcare today. We’re starting to see [00:29:00] folks sort of advocate that, you know what, why don’t we let the machine treat the patient a little bit more and a little bit more. And there was a a tweet thread that caught fire in the last month or so that healthcare is having its top deck of the titanic moment, which essentially advocated that, you know, there’s going to be this whole parallel system of care that’s largely ran by GPT like softwares, where a provider is simply signing their name on a diagnosis and a prescription.

Erik Sunset: So you’re seeing the whole spectrum unfold from simply communicating with patients for baseline questions, documenting in charts, and then, you know, the outcome that some are hoping to achieve is to just have a provider be a rubber stamper on treatment plans and prescriptions. Where do you fall on the spectrum?

Erik Sunset: You know, we’re talking about two very far extremes. I expect you’ll land somewhere in the middle, but some of this seems really feasible and really useful. And some of it just seems crazy.[00:30:00]

Lisa Blue: Yeah, I think that, you know no big climatic answer here but the, there, there is an opportunity to, you know, leverage some of that automation, but. think that, I don’t think I, I’m certainly not advocating that we would move towards, you know, using that in the place of one thing that, you know, we’d like to talk about is that, you know, when we’re doing to patients about, for example an upcoming procedure. there are, you know, all of us as human preferences for how we learn, right? So some are going to read, some are going to watch a video, some are going to, you know, have a face to face conversation with someone. so the, the efficiency piece really comes in to one using tools like that, because there are going to [00:31:00] be some people that say that’s enough for me.

Lisa Blue: I needed just enough information to understand that I don’t think that medication before my procedure and I shouldn’t eat or drink after midnight. Right. I’m, I’m good. But someone else, maybe they have a more complex history and they, have additional questions or they had somebody had the procedure and now they they took care of them afterwards and like, well, Right. So that first patient or of those patients aren’t going to require it. That that that phone call, right? And in a lot of A. S. C. Settings, for example, people are still getting phone calls ahead of their procedure. And so which is shocking to me in 2023 that we’re still doing that. So when you think about delivering information like that ahead of a procedure that that small segment of patients that require care. Additional support. Then instead of having those limited resources instead of having that nurse [00:32:00] call the 20 patients on, you know, the provider schedule they’re working with the next day, can send that message out for them. And if, you know, two of those patients need additional support, then that can be a phone call.

Lisa Blue: Now, that’s certainly a lot more efficient in terms, as opposed to them repeating the same thing. Conversation and the same instructions over 20 times, right? If they’re doing ortho procedures, right? Those are going to be very, very similar instructions. So I think AI and using tools like that, it’s, it’s really very similar.

Lisa Blue: I think there’s a place for it. but we still need to have the controls when you know, almost like a parachute to be able to pull the parachute. Like, you know, I, if I’m a patient and I need to get to a person that I can easily get to a person you know, provide more individualized information,

Erik Sunset: Sure. Yeah. Nobody likes to be frustrated by a autoresponder or one of the phone [00:33:00] trees that we bump into so frequently these days that that makes perfect sense to me very well measured. They’re a little bit of interesting to see how the AI space. blossoms in in 2024 because it will. We’re we’re finally moving fast on a technological front in healthcare with something.

Lisa Blue: Right. Right. Exactly.

Erik Sunset: So coming back to our central theme around patient engagement, this is sort of a broader trend type question for for you and for what you’re doing at Provider Tech. There’s a big gap in generations from our Baby Boomers down to Gen X and you got the Millennials and Gen Z. What do you see as the key differences in meaningfully engaging each of these groups or is there one?

Lisa Blue: I, it, yes, there is one. So it’s, it’s the same way when I started talking about. You know, looking at, the patient population that is due for the cancer screening and this segment of the population came [00:34:00] in this year, their, their message is a little bit different. Maybe they just need that, that requisition generated so they can complete the screening versus the patient who hasn’t even been seen that needs to come back into care.

Lisa Blue: So the Entire communication is different to them. A nudge versus a much more, you know, detailed type of engagement. And so the same could be said for any population. If, if I’m dealing with someone who, you know, has. Dealt with, you know, more automated communication or technology tools their whole life, you know, that, that percentage of that population is going to be more comfortable with that.

Lisa Blue: And, and probably, you know, maybe only. 2 percent of them will actually, you know escalate to a conversation versus an older population. We should anticipate that, you know, we can still use some [00:35:00] tools to communicate to them, but we should anticipate maybe 30 percent of them are going to require additional. Follow up conversations from that there actually is some really interesting data. You know, there’s still this assumption that, you know, Medicare aged patients don’t use technology. And there it’s, it’s. still, I don’t know, you know, we, we heard that once upon a time and, you know, sometimes it’s hard to change minds, but there’s really very interesting data from the Pew center in terms of the adoption of, of smartphones really, even in, you know, the 65 plus populations.

Lisa Blue: And so, you know, while they might not be as adept at it. They’re using smartphones and you know, why are they using smartphones? Because they want to access information easier like we all do. And so I think that there is a space to use technology across those different generations. I think the way that we anticipate how we’re going [00:36:00] to manage it, does matter.

Lisa Blue: I think the messaging matters based on the age, right? The The call to action might be slightly different when we’re doing outreach on our client’s behalf for moms now when they’re, you know, we’re talking about their child’s visit, they’re, they’re much more comfortable doing the entire conversation via text, right?

Lisa Blue: They don’t want to pick up a phone. Right. we talk about that, right? Like. Consider the population you’re communicating with and what are more likely going to be their preferences. You know, managing appropriately around that. That doesn’t mean there’s going to be no one in that population that wants a phone call, but we would anticipate it’s going to be a much smaller population segment of the population.

Erik Sunset: That’s all pretty intuitive except for that Pew Science research. That’s interesting. I’ll have to dig that up. And the only reason I bring it up is that when you think about Access to care. So step one. I haven’t been seen by this [00:37:00] clinic, by this provider, by this facility before I was pointed out recently on the show that if you as an administrator of this facility are only taking you patients when they call you on the phone, you are going to be left in the dust because the folks that are entering responsibility for their own care don’t want to talk to you.

Erik Sunset: They want it all on the phone, maybe an app. It’s got to be web form. It’s Nobody’s calling you anymore in the future.

Lisa Blue: right, absolutely. And you know, going back to the simplicity of the message that I mentioned. Earlier, you know, the simplicity of the technology. Needs to be there as well, right? If it’s, if it’s very clunky to log into a patient portal or, or something like that, then that also isn’t something that most consumers are likely to engage with.

Lisa Blue: So, you know, making it easy to, you know, the, the line of communication between the practice. And that, [00:38:00] that patient or potential patient as short as possible that they can, you know, respond to a text message or they can, you know, complete that information ahead of, of, of time electronically.

Erik Sunset: It’s amazing what Amazon, you know, click now with one or buy now with one click and Uber click. Now you have a car coming in five minutes. You know, you’d like to think you’re above it and better than it, and you have a little bit of patience, but now with bad technology, why would I have any patience at all?

Erik Sunset: I’ll just use the other one if I don’t get what I want.

Lisa Blue: Right. Just

Erik Sunset: Oh

Lisa Blue: I was going to say, I just went to a doctor myself and I went to, you know, ahead of time, I went up, logged into the patient portal. I updated all my patient records because I hadn’t been there for a year over a year and did everything ahead of time. So I was like, I’m set.

Lisa Blue: And then I get in there and I have to. still fill out the same forms that I’ve done. I was like, what, what are you actually [00:39:00] doing? Then why do, why do you have a patient portal? Right. so, you know, that, that patient experience unfortunately happens often than, than not. And so I think that’s, it is a reminder to healthcare organizations. If you’re adopting tools, be mindful of what your internal Operational workflows are, and then you’re not asking people to repeat that because that is frustrating.

Erik Sunset: yeah, the patient portal web form is way harder than just scratching it out on a piece of paper. So that’s like, you’re bit twice in that process. You didn’t take my data and I did it the hard way.

Lisa Blue: Right, right.

Erik Sunset: Oh, that’s so painful. Lisa, I want to be sure I hit on your one big thing around patient engagement, doing it the right way, why it matters.

Lisa Blue: You know, I think that being very strategic matters. And so that [00:40:00] is looking at the population. And by looking at the population, I’m, you know, being very specific. So not just diabetic population. But, you know, what, what other demographics do we know about them? Are there social determinants of health that they’re facing, right?

Lisa Blue: What’s their payer status? All of that information is, is really important to. define the strategy from the type of message you should use to attempt to engage them to the frequency of that messaging, right? Some patient populations might just need a, a gentle reminder. Some might not understand the, the reason that you’re asking them to re engage in care if they’re feeling fine, perhaps. and so being really intentional and understanding the patient population is step one and then being really targeted in the messaging themselves. So I when we’re talking to clients, you know, we talk [00:41:00] about what, what is that message that you would want to hear, right? So, you know, often trying to put yourself in their shoes, but that, that can be more You know, I may be oversimplifying it by say, putting it in their shoes because, because we all do differ in terms of what, what we need.

Lisa Blue: Right. And what we want to hear. And so working with you know, someone who understands those different populations and can help make recommendations. to you. You know, that, that type of messaging? What is the cadence? What is the call to action? Making it very easy for patients to be able to do what you’re asking them to do. Really, really matter. And oftentimes when we’re working with a practice, you know, well, you know, we already do some outreach to patients. And I say, you know, You know, what are you doing? And Right. It’s this very generalized. It’s time. It’s past due time to come back in.

Lisa Blue: I would like to see you. Right. sort of deconstruct that and say, you know, like, [00:42:00] where’s, where’s the opportunities to make this much more meaningful, the recipient. So understanding the audience. It’s really and then being very targeted to that audience is the, my, my pro tips for patient engagement.

Erik Sunset: That is a masterclass to my ears in patient engagement right there. And I, if I can take a stab at this, it sounds like if you think of it in terms of campaigns or messaging sends or And information structures that you want to be sending people, having one of these isn’t good enough when you’re talking about all of the segments and you want to be doing really probably need a half dozen, two dozen, you know, whatever that number is, but one isn’t enough.

Lisa Blue: Exactly. Right.

Erik Sunset: Well, Lisa, as we sort of wrap up this episode here, how can our listeners connect with you? Are you big on any of the social medias?

Lisa Blue: Yes. You can find me on LinkedIn, Lisa blue. You can also [00:43:00] follow our provider tech. Page on LinkedIn. Content team does a great job of putting out a lot of really great information. So I do encourage you to follow follow us there for all the latest and greatest that’s happening in provider tech and things in the healthcare tech industry.

Erik Sunset: We’re in a similar veins there. LinkedIn is kind of it these days. There’s not a whole, not a whole lot of reason to keep up on the other one.

Lisa Blue: Yes.

Erik Sunset: I want to thank you so much for joining us on behalf of the entire DocBuddy team. Appreciate everybody listening to the show and be sure you’re subscribed on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Erik Sunset: So you can always get the freshest episodes of the DocBuddy journal. Until next time, I’m your host, Erik Sunset. Talk to you again soon.