After attending many conferences and other events and talking to a lot of Gozio customers, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what the priorities and focus will be in 2023. In this blog post, we’re sharing some of our insights about what we expect to see in 2023, particularly as it relates to mobile patient engagement and digital front door initiatives and strategy.
- For some of the organizations that are a little ahead of the curve on their digital strategy, remote monitoring, virtual care, and hospital-at-home look like they will be prioritized in 2023. According to one of our clients, part of the reason they are jumping the queue is that these solutions may be one way to mitigate staffing shortages while maintaining quality patient care. We think it’s important to remember though that when too many things are vying for people’s attention, nothing ends up getting the attention in the end. So it’s important to be strategic as you add more “apps” and tools. Ideally, everything for both patients and staff should live in one central location like an easily accessible mobile platform. A new survey by PYMNTS and Lynx, Healthcare In The Digital Age: Consumers See Unified Platforms as Key to Better Health, showed that about four of every five consumers surveyed want to use a unified digital platform to manage information about their healthcare and insurance benefits.
- No one will be surprised to read that there is a staffing crisis in healthcare. We’ve heard about it at every event and from most of our clients. If we heard it once, we heard it one hundred times, “We need to improve staff experience to address burnout and retention in 2023.” We expect to see a focus on creating staff experiences that mirror the ones we’ve been creating for patients. First, staff will want to make use of many of the same features that engage patients. They should also be able to authenticate to access work-related content and tools. And finally, staff recognition is simple and more powerful when staff and patients are on the same platform.
- Another interesting trend we are seeing is the desire to get back to choosing the best of breed solutions to solve specific problems. While we know that improving the human experience in healthcare requires centralizing tools and features, that doesn’t mean creating total platform lock-in. For a long time, there has been an idea that a completely integrated single solution might be better. But the truth is that no one can do everything really well. The better option is using a framework that allows you to pick your best solutions and then bring them together in one place. In other words, if online scheduling is a priority then pick the solution you think is the best one for your organization and patients. We are moving away from one system that does everything ok to picking the very best solutions and then tying them together on the best framework.
- The current trend of hospital M&A will continue, and more and more "acute care" services will pop up to try to capture patients. While this may help with the revenue challenges, it can also cause greater confusion for patients—both new and existing. It's important to think about how to convey these changes and ensure consumers can stay in network to get the best care. A thoughtful mobile strategy is one of the best ways to have a strong continuity of care through their journey.
We're looking forward to the next round of events this Spring to see how things are continuing to change.
