Latest Patient Engagement Trends in New Most Wired Report

CHIME’s Digital Health Most Wired Survey Patient Engagement Trend Report for 2023 has been released. The report dives into the most heavily weighed category of the Most Wired survey to look at key trends.

According to the report, “Weighing significantly in the overall calculus of an HCO’s DHMW performance (~16% of the total score), the Patient Engagement section of the survey can be highly determinant in defining an HCO’s digital health progression.

‘The priority on Patient Engagement in the DHMW model is fairly intuitive once you think about it,’ says Lorren Pettit, CHIME’s Vice President of Digital Health Analytics (DHA). ‘Patients are experienced with consumer technologies and feel this is an area they have some competency in which to judge. So, when an HCO is recognized as a DHMW Level 9 or 10 HCO, the market will typically use the one data point they are comfortable with in determining if the recognition is believable and deserved. And that data point for most involves the HCO’s digital patient engagement tools.’

This sentiment is shared by Sara Meinke, Sr. Director of IT Ambulatory Network Innovation at Baptist Health, a North Florida health system and a Gozio Health client.

While noting HCOs have used interviews and surveys, such as HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), for some time now to learn more about patients’ experiences with facilities, administration, and clinical care, Meinke claimed that Baptist Health is going a step further.

‘We take the patient voice very seriously and are partnering with an organization to survey our patient population specifically around the technology that we’ve deployed and their general experiences, sentiment and satisfaction,’ she said. ‘We are putting patients at the forefront and being very thoughtful and methodical with the technologies that we’re designing for our patient population.’”

One core area of the report focuses on finding the right mix of digital solutions to address patient engagement. It highlights that with “leadership, patient input, and development and implementation strategies in place, the challenge is figuring out the right mix of digital tools to meet patient engagement goals. More specifically, the challenge is making sure a given tool is a fit not just for the patient engagement plan but also for the organization’s digital set up.”

It would be ideal for patients to access all the tools in one place, but this often isn’t the approach. The DHMW results do show that test results, discharge notes, bill pay, patient education, and EMR access were implemented by more than 95% of surveyed providers. Those are largely portal features. However, there is lower adoption for other features patients want like symptom checkers and wayfinding. These are things that are not available in a portal. These tools often come from an array of vendors and are offered as one-off apps. 

The ideal solution is to pull both that portal and these one-off solutions into a single platform such as a mobile app. An approach like this is effective but has been overlooked by a lot of health systems to date.

For more about the current adoption of patient engagement technology along with other insights, download the full patient engagement trend report.