In a recent webinar, CipherHealth explored how home healthcare agencies can positively impact outcomes by leveraging patient engagement strategies. John Banks Powell, VP of Post-Acute Strategy and Lyndsey Lord MBA, BSN, RN, VP of Clinical Services highlighted how agencies can engage patients, the results they can expect to see from proactive engagement, and how agencies can measure success.
Exploring the Importance of Patient Engagement
Powell kicked off the webinar by discussing the value of engaging patient throughout and after their home health episode. Powell defines patient engagement as any activity that encourages patients to participate in their care and highlights the many ways in which agencies can engage their patients. By engaging their patients agencies are able to increase satisfaction and bottom-line revenue, improve quality of care, and build for success under the new payment model, PDGM.
As Powell elaborates, agencies are driving patient engagement through a variety of strategies including telephonic outreach, remote monitoring, and risk stratification among others. However, when looking at how agencies can engage the 90-95% of their patients on census who are not high-risk, telephonic outreach proves to be a clear winner in terms of cost-effectiveness and scalability. Not to mention, using phone calls or text messages to engage patients means to leverage technology that is familiar to patients and does not require an app download.
How to Design a Home Health Engagement Program
Lord went on to explain how agencies can maximize HHVBP reimbursement, avoid costly missed visits, optimize field staff, and identify new SOCs by utilizing automated telephonic outreach. She goes on to showcase sample questions that agencies ask on engagement calls to drive towards their desired organizational goals.
When designing an engagement program it is also key to consider the metrics that monitor the effectiveness of the program. Two metrics Lord showcases are patient engagement rates, as well as, issue resolution times. These two metrics will showcase if patients are actively participating in the program, as well as if staff members are able to quickly resolve the issues patients may indicate on outreach calls or texts. A third, and arguably one of the most critical metrics to monitor, is what trends are driving the most common patient issues. By understanding which issues are most prevalent, agencies can take proactive steps in mitigating these issues before they occur.
Achieving Results with Proactive Engagement
Agencies that have implemented automated telephonic outreach programs have been able to achieve tremendous success in improving both patient outcomes and experiences. During the event, Powell showed attendees how agencies were able to reduce readmission rates and increase HHCAHPS scores with their patient engagement efforts. By leveraging technology to scale patient engagement efforts, agencies were able to more efficiently leverage resources to achieve success.
As agencies seek to differentiate themselves from the competition, patient engagement will be critical to the short and long-term success of the organization. To hear more about this topic, we invite you to access the webinar on-demand by clicking here or by reading our guide to the conditions of participation for home health.
For more information on home health engagement, contact us today.
