Today, providers recognize the value and benefits of engaging with their patients. It leads to increased patient satisfaction and retention, improved health outcomes, greater profitability, and reduced workload. In fact, 62% of patients say that good communication and continuous engagement are the most important factors when choosing care.
Despite its importance, patient engagement can be challenging. A significant portion of the patient-provider interaction occurs outside the office, creating barriers to success that are often beyond the provider’s control. Factors such as a patient’s access to reliable Wi-Fi and technology, health literacy, and willingness to communicate with providers can all make achieving true engagement difficult, if not impossible.
In this blog, we uncover the four most common barriers to help providers spot them ahead of time, plan and mitigate their impact on patient engagement efforts.
Barrier 1: Health Literacy and Education
Health literacy is a patient’s ability to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services to inform health decisions and advocate for themselves. Or, simply put, it’s how patients receive, interpret, and act on health information.
According to the National Library of Medicine, nearly 9 out of 10 adults in the United States struggle with health literacy. Today, low health literacy costs the United States economy about $236 billion per year.
Although no one is immune to poor health literacy and education, certain populations are at a greater risk. These populations include:
- People with lower educational levels
- Low-income individuals
- Elderly populations
- Racial and ethnic minorities
When a patient lacks proper health knowledge, they are often unengaged in their care and are at greater risk of health concerns and higher healthcare costs. In fact, patients with low healthy literacy are 2.3 times more likely to visit the emergency room.
For example, a patient with Type 2 Diabetes and low health literacy may mismanage the disease by not taking medications consistently or accurately, skipping preventative measures like monitoring glucose levels, or not seeing the doctor regularly. However, if the patient understood the illness better, they might learn that a proper diet, exercise, and weight control can often help to reverse the disease. With this knowledge, they may ask their doctor more informed questions that can help them manage it autonomously at home.
Strategies to Overcome Limited Health Literacy
Here are a few strategies to improve health literacy among your patients and ensure they’re empowered with the right information to effectively manage their health.
Strategy #1: Provide patient-friendly resources and materials
We’ve already established that patients with health literacy can engage in more meaningful discussions with their healthcare providers. Unfortunately, patients who struggle with health literacy are unlikely to voluntarily seek health-related resources or materials. They’re often unaware that such materials exist or are uninterested in reading them.
Providers should be proactive in offering educational content to patients. These resources can offer information to support a recent diagnosis, emphasize the importance of preventive care, and document a treatment plan. You can distribute this information through pamphlets, fact sheets, emails, social media posts, verbal communication, or any other format that resonates with your patients. This multi-channel approach ensures you reach patients at different touchpoints and accommodate their varying preferences
Just as important, these resources should be patient-friendly and easy to read. Avoid flooding them with medical jargon, complicated concepts, or complex vocabulary.
Note: Healthcare materials written in plain language at a 4th-6th grade reading level are recommended for easy comprehension.
Strategy #2: Offer education and support programs
Most patients are overwhelmed by a new diagnosis; they may feel isolated, scared, and confused among other emotions. But imagine how scary a new illness might be without prior knowledge, limited or no access to resources, or an inability to understand information about the disease.
Education and support programs can help foster community for patients while also helping them learn about a disease and how to manage it. Your practice can offer programs as an additional resource for improving health literacy among your patients.
Strategy #3: Look for opportunities to proactively educate
The misconception that physicians are solely responsible for making all healthcare decisions can contribute to health literacy deficiencies amongst patients. Patients who believe that they don’t have a voice in their healthcare plans are less likely to educate themselves about health-related issues. Providers can debunk this misconception and help combat health literacy by seeking opportunities to educate patients.
The delivery of test results serves as the perfect opportunity to educate patients about a diagnosis, prognosis, and more. During this time, providers can also help patients understand potential treatment plans and equip them with the knowledge to make an informed decision about the best option for their needs and desired outcomes.
Barrier 2: Technological Inefficiencies
Modern healthcare has transitioned from mundane tasks such as handwritten intake forms and over-the-phone appointment scheduling. Instead, healthcare technology such as patient engagement platforms, have replaced outdated practices by streamlining and automating these functions for a smoother patient experience.
The goal of patient engagement technology is to help providers, medical staff, and patients communicate more effectively and manage the patient more efficiently throughout their healthcare journey.
Although technology is meant to simplify the patient’s experience, it can create a barrier for those who aren’t technologically savvy or don’t have access to reliable technology. Factors that may contribute to technological barriers include:
- Age and cultural differences
- Lack of information and technical support
- Literacy and education levels
- Limited or no access to technology
- Certain medical conditions
For example, an elderly patient might have difficulties logging in to their patient portal to view a message from their provider. Or, a patient whose native language isn’t English may require assistance reading and completing online forms. In both situations, the patient may become frustrated. If technological barriers occur for multiple patients, the result might be longer waiting room times, extra time fielding calls, and other issues that patient engagement technology is intended to mitigate.
Strategies to Overcome Technological Barriers
You can help your patients overcome technological barriers by providing training and support, enabling them to choose their preferred communication methods, and offering key technology in-office. Let’s dive into a few examples of how to do this:
Strategy #1: Provide technology training and support
Technological barriers are sometimes caused by a lack of skills. A patient may want to use the patient engagement platform and other digital tools but doesn’t have the “know-how” to do so. Technology training and support while the patient is in the office can close the gap and help patients feel confident in using technology. You can also offer videos or written resources that the patients can access at home, like how to use patient portals or join a telehealth session.
Strategy #2: Enable patients to choose their preferred communication
Patients are given personalized treatment plans based on their unique health needs and desired outcomes. Similarly, they should be offered and encouraged to choose their preferred communication method for all their health-related information. Phone call, email, text, and a patient portal are all examples of communication methods that patients might be offered to ensure everyone is considered. In fact, 55% of patients say they would consider leaving their current healthcare provider if they could not communicate via their preferred channel.
Strategy #3: Offer key technology in-office
Patients may not always have access to smartphones or computers to complete check-in forms or schedule online appointments. Typically, the alternative to using technology to manage these tasks is manual paperwork (which creates an administrative burden for staff). However, medical practices can provide tablets in-office so that patients can still complete their forms digitally. This approach can eliminate both the technological barrier for patients and administrative hassle for staff.
Barrier 3: Communication Challenges
For years, patients have been passive participants in their healthcare journey, relying on providers as the sole determinant in their care. Now, patients are more active in their healthcare, choosing to communicate and collaborate with their providers for healthier outcomes. Still, communication is a challenge for some patients and their providers.
Patient-provider communications is at the core of an engaging and collaborative healthcare experience. A survey showed that 66% of consumers prefer a provider who communicates in a timely and consistent manner; and 60% say it’s critical for providers to understand the patient beyond basic patient data.
Communication challenges can arise from a variety of factors such as a lack of transparency and trust, language barriers, time constraints, and poor health literacy and education. Unfortunately, these gaps can lead to adverse effects, including patient dissatisfaction, distrust, and poor health outcomes.
Strategies to Overcome Communication Challenges
When both parties are aligned, joint-decision making can lead to better medication adherence, healthier lifestyle choices, and more positive health outcomes altogether. Here are a few strategies to break down communication barriers:
Strategy #1: Implement patient engagement solutions to encourage communication
The right patient engagement technology engages patients throughout every stage of the patient journey. This can be monumental in improving patient-provider communication by ensuring patients receive the provider information and updates they need throughout their healthcare journey. Thirty-six percent of consumers are likely to subscribe to healthcare-related text messages; sixty percent of consumers want the ability to respond to a business’ text messages.
A solution, like InteliChart, has capabilities such as automated appointment reminders, notifications, two-way texting, and other features that can streamline how both parties talk to each other.
Strategy #2: Encourage open dialogue and active listening
Although many doctors rely on concise, transactional communication, most patients value empathy, active listening, and nonverbal cues. For both parties, balancing the different communication styles can be difficult. Open dialogue and active listening engages patients and empowers them to participate and better advocate for themselves throughout their healthcare journey.
Strategy #3: Create a patient-centered care culture
Patient-centered care focuses on the patient’s problem rather than their diagnosis. It emphasizes listening to patients, educating them on their conditions, providing emotional support, creating compassionate environments, and actively involving them in their care.
Often, a patient-centered culture may be disregarded by physicians and medical practices for several reasons: lack of training, the assumption that something is common knowledge or not important, minimal bandwidth, etc.
Whatever the reason, lacking a patient-centered care culture can be problematic for both patients and providers. When a patient-centered culture is missing, a patient may struggle to trust his or her provider and thus impacting communication and collaboration and creating a roadblock for the entire healthcare journey.
Barrier 4: Time Constraints and Workload Pressures
On average, healthcare providers see an upwards of 20 patients per day and spend about 17-24 minutes with each patient. Altogether, that’s about 8 hours per day on patient visits. When you consider that providers must also complete patient charts, attend staff meetings, and other time-consuming tasks, it’s clear how time constraints and workload pressures can interfere with patient engagement.
Poor patient engagement can lead to low medication adherence, rising healthcare costs, and poor health outcomes. When providers are too busy to implement patient engagement practices and technology, they increase each patient’s likelihood of encountering one or more of these issues.
Strategies to Overcome Time Constraints and Workload Pressure
Here are a few strategies to navigate time constraints and ensure patients receive the attention and care they desire.
Strategy #1: Allocate sufficient time for patient interactions
As previously mentioned, providers typically have no more than about 25 minutes to spend with each patient. For some patients and appointment types, this may be ample time. However, some patients need more time than this to connect with their doctor. A rushed visit might prevent the patient from discussing concerns, asking questions, or establishing a meaningful patient-provider relationship. Providers can practice time management (i.e. planning for the day) to ensure each patient leaves their appointments satisfied and with confidence in the information they’ve received.
Strategy #2: Streamline administrative tasks to focus on patient care
A 2021 study found that doctors spend over 15 hours per week on paperwork and other administrative tasks. The problem is that these tasks, although necessary, remove the focus on patient care. Thankfully, patient engagement technology can streamline administrative tasks, like filling out forms, rekeying data, and communication, giving providers more time to focus on patient care and engagement.
Impact of Not Overcoming Patient Engagement Barriers
Now that you understand the barriers to patient engagement, let’s discuss what might happen if you choose not to address these issues.
Consequences of Poor Patient Engagement on Health Outcomes
Poor patient engagement can have serious repercussions for patients. In fact, engaged patients are three times less likely to have unmet medical needs, and twice as likely to seek care in a timely manner in comparison to unengaged patients. When patients are disengaged, they don’t participate in managing their own healthcare. Instead, they let their doctors make all the decisions and choose to remain uninformed. As a result, higher mortality rates, increased complications, hospital readmissions, infections, and other consequences are more likely to occur.
Economic Implications of Poor Patient Engagement for Healthcare Organizations
Value-based care is a financial incentive directly linked to patient engagement. It ties the amount healthcare providers earn to the results they achieve for their patients. This approach aims to shift away from the traditional “fee-for-service” model. Instead, value-based programs reward physicians for delivering care that improves patient outcomes while minimizing costs.
When considering the economic impact of patient engagement, patient retention is just a crucial to address. Retention is key to how medical organizations generate revenue. Research shows that acquiring a new patient is 6 to 7 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Patients who are consistently dissatisfied with their care often seek new providers, leading to lost business and revenue."
Conclusion
As you read about each barrier and the strategies to overcome them, you may have noticed that they’re all interconnected. For example, technology can help providers have more time in the day to devote to patient care. However, patients must actively use the platforms for this to work. Or, patients with poor health literacy need to become engaged in their healthcare to advocate for themselves. But, providers must create an environment where patients are encouraged to ask questions and share their perspectives and wishes.
Essentially, each barrier must be addressed simultaneously to overcome them. Otherwise, if one arm remains a barrier it’ll be difficult to break down the others limiting opportunities for more engaged, healthier patients.
If you want to learn more about engaging patients throughout each step of their healthcare experience, be sure to check out this free eBook.
