Is there anyone there? Supporting patients in remote care.
By Nate Roberts – Director of Operations – Medioh
As virtual care adoption continues to soar, more patients are navigating the benefits and challenges that new models of care can offer. But how can we meaningfully support remote patients to sustain their home health success?
Getting Everyone Onboard
Successful adoption means patients feel comfortable and confident using care tools effectively, and in ways that actually improve their lives. All care plans come with a learning curve. When transitioning to remote care, many patients face common barriers to both access and care satisfaction.
To overcome these hurdles, remote care solutions must be designed to support patients (and providers) in proactively relieving onboarding and activation challenges.
Hello Doctor? It’s Me, Your Patient.
Healthcare providers want to provide quality care to their patients. Whether in a clinic or through remote monitoring tech, providers benefit from meaningful touch-points with their patients. These touch points and the health insights gained from them are critical in improving health management. As value-based care models take hold in North America, positive patient outcomes are a top priority across the board. Providers need remote care technology to effectively work for them and their patients to add tangible value for those involved.
But, to harness the technology and logistics expertise required to move programs past pilot volumes, providers need support. Without this ingredient of structured, streamlined support, providers are burdened with both care provision and program management.
This lessens a program’s focus on care and reduces its patient reach, while overburdening clinical staff in the process. It also hinders the scalability of new models of care; pushing us farther from the transformative scale needed to reverse unsustainable disease trends impacting our health systems.
The Realities of Remote Care Patients
Remote patients have varying ages, ability levels, and technology proficiency. With Chronic Disease affecting 80% of senior patients, accessible remote care is now more necessary than ever.
Most patients prefer human-to-human onboarding support to activate their devices and start their care programs. These patients also typically require on-demand support with technology troubleshooting and proper continued usage of their health tech.
But who provides this support? If an MRI stops working at a hospital, we don’t expect a doctor fix it. The same is true for remote care technology. Clinicians fielding tech troubleshooting calls is counterproductive to the benefits of the solution itself. They need support.
Digital Health Logistics and Patient Engagement partners help fill these gaps. They triage issues related to technology and logistics so that providers can focus on providing care.
Staying on Track
The other benefit of a streamlined remote patient support system? Health plan adherence. One of the greatest challenges facing remote care adoption is patient engagement with care technology. Even with the benefits digital health provides, providers struggle to get patients to use care tech frequently enough to collect actionable health data.
Patient Engagement partners with on-demand support solutions increase the likelihood that patients will use their devices. They support the process of program and plan adoption, encouraging patients to follow recommended monitoring schedules. By creating meaningful touch-points with patients, these partners effectively guide them throughout their entire remote care journey.
Whether by phone call, text/SMS, or email; patients who are effectively supported with their new model of care are more likely to successfully adopt it (and champion the benefits themselves).
For older patients, those struggling with mental health issues, and for individuals with limited technical ability; compassionate, solution-driven support is especially critical in getting them onboard and on track to succeed in their remote care plan.
Trust is Earned
Program adherence has another enemy: privacy concerns. Overcoming trust barriers related to how data is collected, used, and protected is more difficult than ever in today’s medical landscape. Many patients may feel hesitant to use remote patient monitoring technology due to increasingly publicized data breaches in both medical and other industries.
Older and at-risk populations are even more susceptible and sensitive to privacy concerns. These patients often experience a digital divide that makes it difficult to confidently understand, adopt, and benefit from digital health technology.
While many of these anxieties emerge from misunderstandings of how care tech operates, these fears are real, and must be compellingly addressed to generate advocacy for new models of care amongst key patient populations.
Providers, solution partners, and technology leaders must be transparent and proactive in acknowledging and mitigating these concerns to foster trust and safety amongst patients embracing remote care.
Full Circle Support
No matter where they receive care, patients need empathetic support to successfully adopt digital health in long-term ways. Sustainable, streamlined models of patient engagement can help programs scale, increase patient adherence to health plans, and leave both patients and providers satisfied in how their remote care is managed.
Learn more about Medioh’s Remote Patient Support Solutions, including our FDA-Registered North American Patient Contact Center.
