Why Practice’s will Need to Provide a Patient Experience Like Carbon Health and One Medical

If you’ve never been to a Carbon Health or One Medical, it’s definitely worth checking out the next time you’re not feeling well.

What makes practices like these unique is the focus they’ve put on providing a great patient experience and how they’ve leveraged technology to support that experience.

However, to access this experience that’s most likely a step above your doctor down the block, consumers will pay a premium if it’s not in-network or an employer-sponsored benefit. For One Medical specifically, you have to pay a membership fee of $199/year.

While many people would say that going to one of these places is only possible for a certain subset of people [which we would agree with], we think over time, some of the elements from their patient experience will start to trickle down to your “everyday practice”.

Because of this, as a practice, you need to be informed about what you’ll need to do in order to stay competitive. And no, we’re not going to suggest things like having fresh fruit and fancy water bottles in your waiting room. [1]

One Medical and Carbon Health both tout limited or no waiting times. Unless your practice has a desire to expand, bringing on additional physicians or front office staff is probably out of the question for many organizations. However, there are plenty of other factors that can reduce your practice’s wait times.

A couple of ways you can improve wait times are:

Send Automated Appointment Reminders: Ask patients to confirm their appointment ahead of time. If they don’t confirm you’ll know not to delay appointments scheduled after them.

Allow Patients to Complete Paperwork Online: Rather than having patients arrive early to complete paperwork, allow them to complete it prior to the appointment. This will also save your front office staff time for having to input and confirm their information on the fly.

According to EMRFinder the Top 5 EMRs for small practices are Athena, AdvancedMD, DrChrono, Practice Fusion, and Kareo. [2] With the exception of DrChrono which was released in 2009, all of these other platforms were designed and launched in the late 1990s - early 2000s, long before the iPhone 1 was released in 2007.

Think about how much technology has changed and the user experience and design have improved in the last 15-20 years, let alone the last 5 years. 

For many EMRs, the design and ease of use of their associated Patient Portal haven’t caught up to what most patients, especially younger ones, are accustomed to.

Carbon Health App: Finding a Primary Care Provider Visit Creator: Charles Purdy

Because of that, over 60% of patients, especially those who are younger, will switch their provider because of a poor digital patient experience. [3] 

With these factors in mind, we suggest you evaluate whether or not patients are content with your patient portal’s experience by asking for their feedback which can be used to drive your potential decision to change platforms.

As mentioned in one of our previous blogs, 80% of consumers prefer digital communications with their providers like secure chat and SMS. [4] Giving patients these options lets patients ask questions on their own time and gives your staff the flexibility to respond asynchronously.

Digital communication rather than phone calls can also help your practice in a number of other ways.

According to Opticall, 60% of customers will hang up after 60 seconds, with about 32% that will actually call back which can result in significant revenue being lost. With the cost of a lead (or the marketing cost required to get the patient to call your practice) on average being a minimum of $32-50 per patient, this can lead to tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. [5]

In a study by MedicalGPS, it was found that the impact of providing a same-day response or callback to a patient was strongly correlated to a positive patient experience. [6]

Having a queue of digital messages and a task management system in place can help your team prioritize and sort through things like which inquiries are urgent and need an immediate response or will need your team to do some research or additional work to get an answer.

78% of patients want to schedule online. [7] Even with self-scheduling not being available at all practices, 35 % of appointments scheduled were done outside of the typical 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. business hours which further validates that patients want to be able to schedule on their own time. [8]

Offering available time slots, especially those for last-minute cancellations can help recuperate lost revenue opportunities. Additionally, to help mitigate these cancellations and reduce manual work, your practice can fully automate scheduling with an online scheduler and digital appointment reminders.

While a few years ago offering a Carbon Health or One Medical-type patient experience may have seemed out of reach for most practices. However, that’s no longer the case.

With new digital health tools like Tellescope coming to market, practices can now offer a modern patient experience without needing to hire a team of engineers to build a custom app. Reach out today to learn more!