If you type, “What is the digital front door?” into Google, you’ll get pages and pages of articles and blog posts from leading health IT companies and publications, including our friends at DexCare and Hyro, along with an in-depth article in Forbes.
There are some common themes in these pieces. Most of them agree that the digital front door is about:
- Addressing patients’ desire to have a similar experience in healthcare to what they have in other areas of their lives like booking travel or banking
- Embracing technology to enhance the patient experience
- Improving access to services like appointment booking
In many cases, articles will say that the digital front door has many entry points. We hear this at conferences as well. What we liked about the Forbes piece is that it focuses on trying to create a single entry point.
It may not be realistic to have a single entry point, but you shouldn’t have a lot of entry points. The more entry points there are, the worse the patient experience will be. Recent data shows that CIOs report offering as many as 40 different patient-facing solutions at health systems. About half of these are available in a portal while the other half are point solutions. Patients report having access to fewer solutions and at a lower rate. For example, 100% of CIOs say patients can access their medical records and order prescription refills electronically. However, only about 65% of patients say they can do these tasks.
Too many solutions in too many places results in a poor experience and lower adoption of tools the health systems have already invested in. The answer is to streamline and simplify the entry points.
Eighty-nine percent of patients say they want a single platform to manage their healthcare. Of those, half say they want to be able to access that platform on their smartphone. There is also increased interest in getting alerts and information about their healthcare via SMS text messaging.
The digital front door should be made up of the minimum number of paths, all leading in the same direction to a single platform. Given that nearly nine out of 10 people use a smartphone today, that platform must be available on mobile.
The right mobile platform allows health systems to bring all of their patient-facing technology into a consumer-friendly app that can help patients navigate their healthcare journey–both in person and digital–without logins, at any time from anywhere.
With the technology available today it is easy to use email, text, websites, and even kiosks to move people towards an engaging branded mobile app. Using secure links and QR codes, patients can begin their journey from anywhere and be given the option to download the app for a more robust experience.
Talk to someone today about how you can deliver a more seamless digital front door experience through a branded mobile platform.
