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Have you ever walked to a restaurant and had the host greet you by your name? Or perhaps entered your hotel room and found a personalized note along with a bouquet and maybe even your favorite fruits?
That kind of personalized care makes us feel more loved and appreciated.
Not surprisingly, consumers are more likely to frequent and engage with an establishment that has interacted with them in a personal way than one that has not.
And hospitals are not exempted from this rule.
Patients (who are also consumers) expect high-level personalization from their healthcare providers. They crave personalized services that can help them find the right solutions with ease, reach out to their doctors easily, and engage with them on a personal level.
But how can personalized patient care be achieved and improved? We’ll look into the various ways that healthcare facilities can improve personalized patient care.
1. Respond Fast to Barriers to Care
Many barriers come into play in a patient’s treatment journey.
From psychological and cognitive barriers to physical barriers to social and cultural barriers, many patients have to contend with at least one of these difficulties to manage their health.
In fact, a 2016 research commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund revealed that 44% of chronic disease patients experience difficulty accessing care due to one of these barriers.
The key to overcoming these barriers lies in a healthcare’s ability to identify the unique challenges their patients face and the potential remedy to the difficulties. For example, transportation challenges are among the top reasons why patients miss appointments.
To address this problem, healthcare providers could partner with companies like Ride Health to make it possible for everyone to make it to the doctor’s office. Such companies provide a network of transportation partners to manage patient’s transportation across the state.
2. Leverage Big Data to Help Improve Patient Care
In the age of big data, the degree of personalization in any healthcare facility largely depends on the value of the health data collected.
Big data in healthcare refers to the massive volumes of health data amassed from multiple sources, including electronic health records (EHRs), clinical devices, genomic sequencing, medical imaging, and pharmaceutical research.
Adopting technologies for EHR reporting can provide valuable patient data that can help to provide personalized patient care. Most importantly, it can help empower health care providers with the data management and reporting capabilities they need to provide better services.
In fact, healthcare analytics can improve personalized patient care, avoid preventable diseases, and prevent an outbreak of epidemics.
Some top health facilities have been using big data to provide personalized care by providing personalized information to patients. For example, Orlando Health uses large volumes of patient data to provide personalized care to new mums.
Mothers have a wealth of options to choose from, and whatever they decide to focus on, they’ll regularly receive personalized emails with answers to their questions. Instead of scouring the internet for answers to questions regarding parenting, new mums can get individual questions answered right in their inbox.
3. Offer Personalized Telemedicine Care
Telemedicine is the practice of providing remote care to patients through electronic communications.
Simply put, telemedicine entails the distribution of health services via telecommunication technologies. This practice allows long-distance patience and clinician care, monitoring, intervention, education, and reminders.
One advantage of telemedicine is that it allows for high-level personalization.
Many telehealth doctors limit their clientele to 400 – 600 people. This allows them to know their patients on a personal level.
For example, Doctor on Demand is a virtual healthcare service that provides access to doctors, psychologists, and other medical experts anywhere and at any time. This service provides personalized live video doctor visits to monitor patients, diagnose conditions, and deliver prescriptions.
Telemedicine is not only convenient and accurate (unlike online symptom checkers) but also reduces the costs of visiting the doctor’s office every time symptoms appear. Countries can improve personalization in healthcare by embracing telehealth.
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