MedCity Influencers, Health Tech

Why it’s time to invest in a long-term digital front door strategy

Given the rapidly evolving nature of patient expectation, it’s clear that healthcare providers must find ways to transform their services and experiences to deliver a truly omnichannel healthcare experience (HX) that unifies care across both in-person and digital touchpoints.

Over the last two years, we’ve witnessed a fundamental shift in the way patients view the healthcare experience. Almost overnight, healthcare providers pivoted to utilize telehealth appointments in the spring of 2020 at a rate 78 times higher than in the months leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic. While digitally centered care at first appeared to be a temporary solution to address an unprecedented set of circumstances, it turns out these changes were part of a much broader recalibration of patient expectations. Compared to the last best experiences patients were encountering in other facets of their lives—in particular, the digital retail world—healthcare experiences had fallen behind. That’s why, now, nearly two years after the onset of Covid-19, patients continue to use telehealth services at a rate 38 times higher than pre-pandemic levels. After all, in many cases, it’s quite simply a more convenient alternative to a traditional in-person appointment.

In the healthcare sector, we often look at this development as a great win for patient-centric care—and it certainly has the potential to be just that. But it’s important to remember that the ad-hoc solutions that were stood up to create telehealth and digital care opportunities at the height of the pandemic are not finished strategies. Rather, they are a starting point to imagine a new set of digital channels for health care delivery.

Given the rapidly evolving nature of patient expectation, it’s clear that healthcare providers must find ways to transform their services and experiences to deliver a truly omnichannel healthcare experience (HX) that unifies care across both in-person and digital touchpoints. In this search to deliver a stronger healthcare experience, one powerful overarching strategy has emerged—the “Digital Front Door.”

What is a digital front door?

A digital front door is a strategy that takes a modern approach to the healthcare interactions that were traditionally in person or manual, offering a more integrated, digital, frictionless experience for patients. In practice, the DFD introduces more ease, convenience, and accessibility into the entire healthcare journey. The value of a deeper Digital Front Door strategy has the power to pay big dividends for a healthcare organization. Not only will it create operational efficiencies, but it also has the potential to increase patient retention, attraction, and loyalty—all important metrics as margins continue to shrink in a competitive healthcare market.

A strong digital front door strategy incorporates each of the following strategic components:

  • Optimization of interactions, capabilities, support, and care across the entire healthcare journey
  • Use of data to deliver more personalized and predictive patient experiences
  • Adoption of self-service channels for care, information, and support
  • Clarity and transparency for all services, care, and costs to make healthcare more “shoppable”

Why a digital front door is more than just “telehealth”

Focusing primarily on the delivery of telehealth waters down the greater impact that a digital front door strategy can have on the entire operation. For instance, if a patient completes a telehealth appointment, but then learns they must call in and wait on hold to schedule a follow up appointment, they might put it off—creating the potential for worse patient outcomes and lower patient retention.

True digital front door strategies explore the full patient lifecycle for opportunities to create efficiency and convenience for both staff members and patients.

Here are a few of the key touchpoints to keep in mind as you explore a comprehensive Digital Front Door Strategy:

  • Digital entry and care initiation: Provide digital access to the tools, information, and education that will help to address initial care questions and promote brand visibility in a crowded market.
  • Omnichannel care and patient support: Create frictionless, convenient care to patients when and where they need it.
  • Personalized, proactive care follow-up: Deliver follow-up information, guidance, and support to enrich care outcomes and streamline ongoing care for patients throughout their daily routines.

How to jumpstart your digital front door transformation 

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to a healthcare digital front door strategy. But there are a few steps you can take to help ensure the tools and strategies you deploy are aligned with the unique expectations and needs of your patient base. For the most successful adoption, start by taking a step back to gain a clear understanding of your current and targeted patient demographics. More importantly, uncover what they want from their healthcare experience.

You can start this exercise by performing some investigative research and analysis to identify where your current patient journeys, channels, and interactions are falling short. Voice of Customer (VOC), employee listening, data analysis, and current state patient journey mapping can help establish gaps between your existing experience and the experience you want to deliver.

From there it’s time to build alignment within your organization and build out the components that can help you maximize your Digital Front Door efforts. In many cases, it can be helpful to partner with a healthcare experience expert to help you navigate the technology selection, design, and orchestration processes that will ensure your strategy produces measurable results. In all cases, consistent measurement and recalibration of your solution is a necessity to continually stay in lockstep with your patients. When an organization uses patient expectations as it’s North Star, it can begin to convert prospects into loyalists and build memorable experience that boost patient care—and the bottom line.

Photo: tonefotografia, Getty Images


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Jim Sheehan

Jim Sheehan is the Senior Vice President of Digital Experience at Avtex, a TTEC Digital Company. He leads the development and growth of the organization’s offerings centered around digital solutions for experience engagement, insights, automation, and legacy application transformation. As a part of TTEC Digital, Avtex delivers full-service Customer Experience (CX) consulting and solutions focused on helping organizations create better experiences for their customers, including decades of experience helping healthcare organizations better connect with their patients. Since 1982, TTEC has earned a reputation as one of the largest global Customer Experience (CX) technology and services innovators for end-to-end, digital CX solutions including omnichannel contact center technology, conversational messaging, CRM, automation, and analytics.

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