The following is a guest article by Lee Jones, Chief Product Officer at Gozio Health
A 2024 McKinsey & Company survey found nearly 90% of health system executives—representing both technical roles (CIOs, CTOs) and nontechnical roles (CEOs, CFOs)—ranked digital and AI transformation as a high priority. Yet 75% of respondents believe that their organizations aren’t dedicating enough planning or resources to deliver on the promise of digital transformation.
Consumers overwhelmingly agree. While patients crave digital access that is streamlined, convenient, and efficient, just 17% of patients believe healthcare organizations have improved their digital offerings in the last few years.
One of the biggest barriers to digital satisfaction: Healthcare providers offer too many tools across too many platforms and prioritize web-based offerings over mobile solutions. Given that 65% of those who received medical care in the past 12 months used a mobile device when interacting with their healthcare provider, it’s time to reprioritize investments.
Three key takeaways for hospitals when investing in mobile are:
- Get higher ROI by taking an “80-20” approach to focus a smaller budget on differentiators
- Provide an end-to-end experience that addresses the full patient journey
- Provide a seamless, unified experience and user interface
Mobile: Healthcare’s New Problem-Solver
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut. For years, website optimization has been a key factor in the equation for improving customer acquisition and retention. And while website maintenance remains an important budgetary line item, there is a new contender for dollars that health systems need to prioritize: mobile.
Research released April of this year reveals that most consumers (64%) are likely to use a business’s mobile app than its website through a mobile browser. That’s significant in terms of how organizations position their digital strategies. Especially in healthcare, mobile should be viewed as a new problem-solver for a host of patient engagement and experience challenges.
For example, consider proactive outreach initiatives aimed at improving population health. Is a diabetic patient more likely to see or respond to a medication or appointment reminder via a patient portal email or a text-based reminder that takes them to a mobile app? Given the findings of a recent ONC report on patient portal use, the odds are more in favor of mobile app use: Individuals increased their use of apps to access their online medical records between 2020 and 2022, while web-only access to portals decreased. The report also noted that individuals who used an app to access their online medical records accessed them more frequently.
Laying the Right Foundation for Mobile
A health system’s mobile app is only as good as its download and reuse rate. May apps fail because health systems don’t understand consumer expectations around user experience and interfaces. To lay the right foundation for mobile, healthcare organizations should consider the following steps.
Get Higher ROI by Taking an “80-20” Approach
Don’t waste precious money on expensive engineers re-building common mobile functionality. Focus your investment on what truly differentiates you from your competition. Mobile app design should reflect a balance of what patients most desire in digital experience and the specific goals of a health system. Research reveals that there are foundational elements that most patients want to access from smartphones. Some of these include wayfinding capabilities along with the ability to view lab results, access patient records, schedule appointments, request prescription refills, complete registration, and communicate with providers and other healthcare professionals. Health systems can quickly and cost-effectively set up a mobile app using a platform that already addresses the 80% of features consumers want. Then, over time, the remaining 20% can be identified and optimally addressed.
Offer an End-to-End Experience that Addresses the Full Patient Journey
In today’s tech-driven world, it’s nearly impossible to leave the house without a smartphone. These tools are used for everything from starting a car to ordering morning coffee to monitoring children’s grades or paying bills. When designing digital strategy, smartphones can become powerful problem-solving tools when health systems turn them into a digital companion that guides patients through their entire care journey. Imagine a patient engagement tool that navigates patients from their homes to health systems appointments, then provides the ability to schedule an appointment, access lab results, ask questions, and get answers in real time. End-to-end experiences like this are what consumers expect in today’s market and can not only give health systems a powerful competitive advantage but also provide a means for enhancing care quality and better engaging patients in their care.
Deliver a Seamless, Unified Experience and User Interface
Mobile strategies in today’s healthcare organizations often don’t achieve their goals due to a disjointed approach that does not consider consumer preferences around convenience. Research strongly suggests that nearly all consumers prefer using a single digital platform to manage their healthcare needs. Consequently, if patients are forced to log in and out of multiple different apps to access such functions as wayfinding, appointment scheduling, or bill pay, the experience becomes too cumbersome. Health systems that leverage a customizable mobile engagement platform to bring all desired consumer-facing digital offerings into a single mobile app will avoid creating a scenario of “mobile app fatigue” and ensure greater download rates.
Mobile is the future of patient engagement in healthcare. Hospitals and health systems that lay the right foundation—and consider the above best practices—will reap the benefits of a well-positioned mobile strategy that delights consumers and drives loyalty.
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