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Digital Strategies to Address Health Equity

Wednesday, July 5th, 2023

According to a HIMSS Market Insights study, nine out of ten healthcare executives see health equity as a top business priority. Improving health equity can drive value for other business metrics, including patient satisfaction, provider retention, health outcomes, and cost reduction. Email is an excellent way to address health equity issues, thanks to its widespread adoption across different ethnic and demographic groups.

 

doctor sending an email to patient

What is Health Equity?

According to the CDC, health equity is “achieved when every person has the opportunity to attain his or her full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances.”

 

Under President Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services has prioritized health equity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 highlighted the healthcare system’s racial, economic, and social disparities. For example, COVID-19 killed Black, Latino, and Indigenous people at double the rate of White people. Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders remain three times more likely to contract the illness than White people. Addressing the social, cultural, racial, and economic factors contributing to this disparity is essential to improving individual and population health.

Improve Health Equity with Email Communications

Email is an excellent tool for patient engagement because of its widespread adoption across different demographic groups. As you can see in the data below, email has an overall adoption rate of 92%, and across all age and ethnic groups surveyed, adoption rates are above 80%.

email usage charts by age and ethnicity

Unlike phone numbers and addresses, email addresses seldom change because of economic instability. Email addresses are free to create and are typically accessed at least once a day. Broadband access continues to expand, though it still presents a barrier to email communication. However, even when broadband is unavailable, slower connections still permit text-based emails to be sent and received. Email is reliable, easy to use, and widely accessible to most individuals, making it an excellent channel for patient engagement.

The Technical Advantages of Email

Email also offers several advantages on the technical side to address digital health equity. Email’s main benefit is its ability to be personalized at scale. When using a secure email provider like LuxSci, you can create groups or segments of patients and send them relevant information about their health conditions or risk factors. These workflows can be automatically triggered when certain criteria are met to streamline operations and improve efficiency.

Thanks to the nearly universal use of EHR systems, healthcare marketers can access a wide variety of first-party patient data. Health records not only contain information about health conditions, but also information about patient demographics and preferences.

Intelligent marketers can use this data to close care gaps and improve health equity. Let’s take a look at an example.

An Example of Personalization and Segmentation to Address Health Equity

There are so many options when it comes to segmenting your patient population. To address health equity, you can use information like the patient’s native language and communication preferences to create personalized messaging. By doing so, you can increase response rates and close care gaps.

 

For example, say you have a significant portion of your patient population that speaks Spanish, and they are more likely to miss an appointment or not schedule a follow-up. How can you drive appointment attendance and reduce churn? The first step is to create an audience segment composed of patients who speak Spanish as their first language. Next, create email messages that are designed for the audience. This means writing the subject line and email contents in Spanish and using imagery they can identify with. But you can do more than that. Point people in this audience to schedule appointments with doctors who are fluent in Spanish. If there are other reasons this audience struggles to attend appointments, extend opportunities to help them with transportation, child/elder care, or access healthcare outside of regular working hours. Once you understand the barriers to attending appointments, you can extend personalized offers that help increase attendance and improve health outcomes. 

 

Most importantly, email allows you to test messaging and see what’s working. Review your campaign statistics and adjust your messaging to reach the most people and improve health equity among your patient population.

Conclusion

As we have seen, email is a highly effective way to engage marginalized patient populations. However, don’t forget about HIPAA compliance! Communications personalized and segmented using ePHI need to be secured.

 

LuxSci offers secure email services designed to meet HIPAA requirements. If you want to learn more about addressing health equity with secure communications, please contact us today.

Tags: covid19, diversity, email engagement, email use, ePHI, health equity, inclusion, patient engagement, personalization, phi, segmentation
Posted in Email Marketing
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Using Technology to Address Clinician Burnout

Tuesday, April 26th, 2022

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges with clinician burnout were impacting the healthcare system. A 2019 British Medical Association (BMA) survey found 80% of doctors were at high or very high risk of burnout.

Enter the pandemic: staffing shortages, supply chain issues, and new regulations all contributed to an increase in clinician burnout over the last two years. This is a major issue- burned out clinicians make more mistakes and have less satisfied patients. In this article, we discuss ways to use technology to address burnout and improve workflows.

clinician burnout

Causes of Clinician Burnout

The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated just how fragile the healthcare workforce is. As COVID-19 swept across the country, front-line workers were under immense pressure to serve their patients in extremely stressful circumstances. In the early days of the pandemic, the lack of personal protective equipment required clinicians to put their lives on the line to care for patients. In addition, quarantines for COVID-19 exposure and family caretaking responsibilities drastically impacted staffing and patient-to-nurse levels. Healthcare workers often had no choice but to take on more shifts during highly stressful time periods to help patients get the care they deserve.

Even though the pandemic is winding down, clinicians are still experiencing the effects of burnout. Healthcare workers are leaving their jobs at high rates and in some cases leaving the field altogether. Workforce shortages, increasing stress, and clinical documentation requirements leave healthcare professionals increasingly burned out.

Ways to Alleviate Clinician Burnout with Digital Technology

Not only is burnout bad for health care providers, but it can also lead to mistakes and poor patient experiences. New technology can help alleviate burnout, but it is important to find a balance. Introducing new technologies without proper training or administration can increase stress and make things worse. EHRs are an example of a type of technology that is often a major cause of burnout. It is important to be thoughtful with any technology implementation.

Below, we discuss some ways to use technology to streamline and accelerate clinician workflows.

Reduce Administrative Burdens

New technology can help streamline administrative workflows. Let’s use an annual doctor’s appointment as an example. Upon arrival to an appointment, a patient fills out a paper form with their health conditions, medications, family history, and other information. It is collected by the front desk and the patient heads into the appointment, where they are often asked the same series of questions by the clinician, who hastily types the answers into the patient’s health record.

There is a better way to collect this information. By digitizing the patient intake form, the patient’s answers are automatically added to their health record, reducing administrative time. The clinician can spend more time providing health care, rather than filling out paperwork. Updating patient health records is one of the most time-consuming tasks that leads to burnout. By digitizing some of this paperwork, it reduces the administrative burden on clinicians.

Patient Education

Patient education is extremely important in a world of medical misinformation. However, it can also be a time-consuming process for front-line staff. Digitizing patient resources in the form of articles, videos, and PDFs is a convenient way to answer frequently asked questions.

Let’s use an example of a patient with a broken arm. They get a cast at the office and the doctor explains how to take care of it. However, when they get home and go to sleep, they wake up with an extremely itchy arm. They might be concerned and reach out to their healthcare provider. Instead interrupting the clinician’s day with a phone call, the administrative staff can email pre-produced videos or articles explaining how to treat the itching and what they should do if it becomes more severe.

By creating these materials in advance, it is easy for clinicians to rapidly answer questions. In addition, patients can have their issues addressed quickly and will have a better experience. They also may be less likely to turn to social media to crowdsource at-home remedies.

Patient Communication

On that note, anyone who has tried to get in touch with their doctor by making a phone call knows how time-consuming and tedious it can be. Instead, encourage asynchronous messaging for non-urgent medical issues. Asynchronous messaging, like secure email and texting, is not immediate and clinicians can respond to whenever is convenient. It is useful when requesting referrals and prescription refills.

Using a patient portal allows both doctors and administrators from the office to address the patient’s needs and distribute workflows in a way that makes sense. Although a patient may seek out a doctor, their issues may be more properly handled by a nurse or administrative staff.

Conclusion

Clinician burnout is a major issue impacting health systems and patient health outcomes. Tackling this challenge is a difficult task, but organizations should look into ways to use technology to improve and automate workflows.

Tags: burnout, covid19, ePHI, patient communication, patient education, patient portal, technology
Posted in Email
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