The term “Digital Front Door” describes the use of technology to enhance the patient experience at every stage of the patient journey. In hospitals, this means all patient touchpoints ranging from booking an appointment, through registration, discharge, and settling their bill. Insured members expect a seamless digital experience with their health insurer and want transparency over their level of coverage, excesses, and co-payments. By providing a “digital front door” organisations can give patients more control over their care and simultaneously reduce their own administrative burden (think call centers for example) in the process. So this is really a win-win for everyone.  

Convenience

Patients expect and will come to demand convenience and a hassle-free way of interacting with their healthcare provider and insurer in the same way as in other areas of their lives. Hospitals and health insurers who provide a great digital experience will have a significant competitive advantage and promote loyalty and engagement with their patients and members. Patients want to be able to book an appointment and register at a time convenient to them. Patients want to know what they will have to pay. Unless they are provided with a simple and transparent alternative, they will pick up the phone with their hospital or insurer placing additional demands on already stretched staff.  

Taking the paper out of healthcare

Imagine if every time you went to the airport to board a flight, you were handed a bunch of paper forms to fill out and sign. Incredibly this is the experience that patients experience every day when they arrive for a procedure at a hospital. Aside from the inconvenience to the patient, the process is inefficient for the administrative staff who have to deal with multiple patients filling out forms at the same time during the busy morning hours. If we can book our flights, select our seats, check-in online, and pay without talking to anyone at a time that suits us-why should a hospital visit be any different?

Engagement and Loyalty

Tech companies like Netflix and Amazon drive customer engagement through a seamless digital experience and by minimising the number of steps required to carry out a task. This great experience results in customer loyalty and we have seen how these companies continue to flourish while traditional high street shops continue to decline. Indeed, DVD rental stores are a thing of the past because they failed to deliver an experience on par with streaming services. Healthcare should be no different and the covid pandemic has resulted in a shift to more online care and this will hasten the introduction of technology and a digital front door experience.  

At MedoSync, we focus on a great digital experience for patients from their first interaction with a Hospital or health insurer. This also applies to the administration staff who have real-time access to insurance cover details through to consultants being able to sign off on claims at the touch of a button on their phones, to insurers receiving clean accurate data. The “digital front door” is ready to be opened and hospitals and insurers that embrace new technology stand to enhance the long-term engagement and loyalty of their patients and members for many years to come.  

Hospitals are losing 6-9% of their revenue due to leakages in the billing process. MedoSync stops these leakages by creating the invoice in real-time and ensures hospitals get paid in full.

I am taking more time for reflection and writing up posts related to MedoSync’s areas of expertise: medical billing, healthcare, technology, and being a start-up in that ecosystem.

Want to learn more about MedoSync, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit our business profile on LinkedIn.

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