InterviewInterview With John Deutsch On Unlocking the Digital Front Door With a Patient Engagement Platform

While the concept of the Digital Front Door is becoming pervasive, many healthcare organizations are far behind in delivering a robust strategy that truly meets patients’ needs and delivers operational efficiencies. In their white paper, Bridge Patient Portal identified the qualities of a best-in-breed patient engagement platform that will allow your healthcare organization to unlock the Digital Front Door and invite patients to fully engage in their health journey. To learn more about the topic, we conducted an interview with John Deutsch, CEO Bridge Patient Portal.

1. What is the Digital Front Door concept?

A Digital Front Door does not necessarily imply a mobile app, patient portal, or website, but rather unifying patient-facing tools and resources into a single, cohesive, user-friendly, streamlined entry point.

2. Why are healthcare organizations far behind in meeting the Digital Front Door strategy and its related themes?

Healthcare has notoriously been late to the game when implementing new consumer-centric technologies. Patients have always been treated as patients and not consumers with options, and that relationship has been taken for granted. Providers haven’t been giving patients what they’ve been asking for.

Source systems such as Electronic Health Record (EHR), Revenue Cycle Management (RCM), or Practice Management (PM) software aren’t known for their great APIs and interface capabilities. Patients need the data found within these systems to schedule an appointment, access medical records, and message their provider.

The sheer complexity of healthcare solutions has also been a challenge; there are many tools and moving parts, which has made things challenging for vendors to come up with good solutions.

3. Who can mainly benefit from the Digital Front Door strategy in the healthcare sector?

Both the patient and the provider equally. They each benefit each other; they are both dependent on each other, and therefore a Digital Front Door benefits both.

4. What benefits can healthcare organizations gain from the Digital Front Door strategy?

Healthcare organizations can experience better patient outcomes and higher profitability on value-based care patients. A Digital Front Door attracts new patients, especially ones that are seeking digital tools. More than half of patients would instead choose a practitioner that provides digital capabilities.

5. What features does a Digital Front Door healthcare solution provide patients with?

• Prescription Refills

• Health Maintenance Reminders

• Patient-Provider Secure Messaging

• Appointment Scheduling

• Remote Monitoring

• Telemedicine

• Medical Records / Encounter Notes

• Patient Payments

• Patient Forms

• Lab Results

• Patient Education

• Live Chat

• Patient Intake / Check-In

• Provider / Location Search

• Mapping & Wayfinding

• Urgent Care Visit Assistance

• Referral Requests

• Transportation Services

• Ecommerce

• Insurance Eligibility & Service Estimates

• Virtual Waiting Room

6. What challenges can a Digital Front Door strategy help solve amid the COVID-19 pandemic?

The scheduling for vaccination appointments, providing guidelines for visits during the pandemic, creating a virtual waiting room in which patients wait in their car instead of the waiting room, and facilitating telehealth sessions.

7. Where do you see Digital Front Door in healthcare in the next 5-years?

Clinically orientated through integration with remote patient monitoring systems, providing patients tools not just to communicate with their provider and make appointments, pay their bills, but actually manage their care better.

Learn more about how your healthcare organization can develop an industry-leading digital front door by reading Bridge’s White Paper: Unlocking the Digital Front Door With a Patient Engagement Platform