May News and Insights in Digital Health

May was another busy month of events with several regional HIMSS conferences, along with events like Swaay.Health. Our wrap up for May has links to some conference recaps as well as a few new surveys and other industry news.

The busy spring conference and tradeshow season can be fun but it’s also exhausting. Everyone is probably glad when it’s over. The one thing I try to remember is not to try to remember everything or take a hundred tips home with you. If you get one or two really useful things out of a conference that you can take back and use, then you’ve gotten something valuable for your time.

Check out the recap of the Swaay.Health annual meeting for a few insights from the patient experience unconference session, which was so engaging.

And read the short overview of a few things that were worth sharing from NEHIMSS. The biggest takeaways were around the value of digital equity, the importance of meeting patients where they are, and simple ways to create a culture that supports patient experience.

There were a few interesting surveys and reports that came out in May as well:

• It was a surprise to see that e-prescribing is still pretty low. A Surescripts study found e-prescriptions filed by pharmacists increased 47% from 2019 to 2022, compared to just 4% for PCPs.
• Experian released its latest report on patient access. It’s improving but there is still work to be done with patients continuing to report that getting an appointment in a timely way is still a challenge. (watch for a deep dive on this report in an upcoming blog post)
• This nugget didn’t seem all that surprising to us but it seemed worth noting that a new survey showed that patients prefer that the background showing during a telehealth visit be of a provider’s office (versus their home). 
• In the wake of the Change Healthcare cyberattack, Software Advice’s 2024 Medical Cybersecurity Survey seems very relevant. It says that more than 25% of ransomware attacks directly impact patient care, leading to disrupted medical services, lost data, and compromised patient safety.

We’ll close out with the new report from Accenture and the article by Sara Heath in PatientEngagementHIT. According to the article, “89 percent of patients who left a provider did so because of limited ease of navigation. This means the provider was hard to do business with, the patient had a bad experience with administrative staff, or the digital engagement services did not meet patient needs.” Sara goes on to look at what the report says about patient trust and loyalty and who the issues mentioned above impact that. The article and report are well worth a read.