Digital Front Doors Versus Physical Front Doors in Healthcare; Hospitals Lagging

Vince Kuraitis ofBetter Health Technologies made a very important point with a recent series of Tweets. He proposed the interesting idea that hospitals are providing patients with physical front doors but were lagging in providingdigital front doors. Below are his comments suggesting that hospital digital front doors currently consist of often inadequate patient portals but that the leadership of most hospitals are"clueless" about a broader set of digital services. He provides six reasons to explain why they have ceded patient portal leadership:Delivery systems have had (and still have) the ability to control their"digital front doors" through PATIENT PORTALS. To date, however, most are clueless. Tomorrow's portals will be comprehensive, broad, user-friendly. Who will own them?IDSs have many reasons to rationalize ceding patient portal leadership:Don't have the capital, and/or prefer to spend elsewhereDon't have the experience/staffLearning curve too steepMore important prioritiesTech is immatureI have also commented in the past that hospitals are not investing time and resources in patient portals (see:Patients Often Lukewarm about Patient Portals; Problems with Training?). My own view on this problem is that physicians and hospital executives, despite their best efforts, don't really have a deep understanding of consumerism in healthcare. Regarding patient appetite for information, they have offered various versions of patient...

Source: Lab Soft News - April 26, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Hospital Executive Management Medical Consumerism Source Type: blogs