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Overcoming Barriers to Successful Digital Health Patient Engagement

Tuesday, October 31st, 2023

Effective patient engagement is a goal for many healthcare organizations because of the benefits. When patients are engaged in their healthcare, illnesses are diagnosed sooner, bills are paid faster, and patient satisfaction is increased, leading to better business outcomes for the healthcare organization. Advances in technology have made it easier to achieve successful digital health patient engagement. Nevertheless, barriers remain when using digital channels to engage patients effectively. This article discusses the main barriers to digital patient engagement and how to overcome them to drive better results.

hand pointing at ipad with digital health symbols

Barriers to Digital Health Engagement

Patient engagement involves encouraging patients to make informed decisions about their health. Engaged patients are activated patients, meaning they participate in positive behaviors to manage their health. Proactive management of healthcare conditions helps improve outcomes and achieve lower costs. Digital health tools offer scalable ways to engage patients but must be thoughtfully implemented and deployed to achieve the best results.

Let’s review the most common barriers to digital health patient engagement and potential solutions for these issues.

Limited Access to Technology

Digital patient engagement tools may be a poor choice for patients without access to the internet, smartphones, or other digital devices. Though broadband access and smartphone users have risen over the past few years, the individuals without access are often the most in need of patient engagement efforts.

Solution: Invest in Consumer Technology

Some organizations have experimented with providing low-income, at-risk populations with the tools they need to monitor their health digitally. Providing smartphones, internet-connected medical devices, and even mobile hotspots can help increase access to digital health tools that drastically improve patient lives.

Low Health Literacy

If you’ve ever received a bloodwork report and struggled to understand what it meant, you can relate to the struggles that patients with low health literacy face. Suppose the digital health patient engagement tactics you employ are heavy with medical jargon and unclear to lay people. In that situation, patients cannot act on the information to improve their health.

Solution: Create Content for Users

Strip technical jargon from patient communications and keep patients from being overwhelmed with information. Engagement messages should be easily understood and clearly define the patient’s next step.

For example, if you use remote patient monitoring tools for patients with diabetes and send weekly reports on their average A1c levels, you must 1) make sure the patient knows what the reading means and 2) provide a clear direction for what the patient should do with that information. If the reading is too high, clearly state that and provide some next best steps. If the reading looks good- celebrate that and encourage them to continue to make the right choices to manage their diabetes.

Privacy and Security Concerns

It’s no secret that healthcare data is valuable to cybercriminals, and many high-profile breaches have made patients wary about digitally sharing health information. Patients may be concerned about the privacy and security of their personal health information, particularly if they are unsure how it is used.

Solution: Invest in Tools Designed for HIPAA Compliance

Ensure that the digital tools you use to engage with patients have recommended security features, including encryption and access controls like multifactor authentication. You can also work with your legal and security teams to craft policies that outline how patient data is used and when it will be securely disposed of. Patients have a right to control their data, and these policies can help build trust and increase confidence in your patient population to boost the adoption of digital health tools.

Limited Provider Support

Patients may be less likely to engage with digital health tools if they do not receive adequate support or encouragement from their healthcare providers. Even basic patient portals are more likely to be used by patients to review their health information only once prompted by their healthcare provider.

Solution: Work with Providers to Encourage Adoption

Digital health patient engagement tools must have buy-in from providers to be effectively deployed. Eighty-five percent of patients say they always trust their healthcare providers, meaning their support can influence patient adoption rates. Having providers explain the solution, why it is in use, and how patients can utilize it to improve their health can significantly increase engagement with the tools.

Age and Cultural Differences

Patients from different ages and cultural backgrounds may have different preferences and expectations regarding digital health tools. We are all familiar with the stereotypes of older people not understanding how to use technology. That does not mean digital health engagement tools cannot be used, but instead must be deployed in a culturally specific way.

Solution: Improve Accessibility and Invest in Training

Based on the patient’s comfort level with technology, allocate resources to help educate and train individuals on how best to use the tools. Make sure any technology you use is adequately designed to support individuals with disabilities, i.e., is accessible by screen readers and can support assistive technologies. Also, make sure the digital health tools support the patient’s first language and are personalized to their cultural context.

Lack of Personalization

Digital health engagement tools that do not account for individual patient preferences or needs may not be as effective at engaging patients as tools tailored to their specific needs. After the 2020 pandemic, patients have higher expectations for personalized digital experiences. 90% of patients surveyed want to receive communications that reflect where they are in their healthcare journey. If your tools cannot provide a personalized experience, you may be annoying patients rather than helping them.

Solution: Adopt Tools That Enable the Use of PHI

Use digital health engagement tools that are secure enough to transmit protected health information. When patient data is adequately protected, it can be used to transform your digital patient engagement efforts and improve the patient experience.

Conclusion: Successful Digital Health Patient Engagement starts with the Right Tools

Digital health tools for patient engagement can be quite effective if properly configured and deployed. When looking at ways to improve patient engagement, ensure you are using tools that are easy for patients to use and fit seamlessly into their day-to-day lives. With over 90% of adults already using email, secure email messaging is an effective way to reach patients and provide them with the information they need to improve their health. Contact LuxSci today to learn more strategies for improving patient engagement with digital health tools.

Tags: digital health, email personalization, health literacy, patient engagement, personalization, phi, technology access
Posted in LuxSci Library: HIPAA
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Identity-Driven Engagement: The Next Generation of Patient Engagement

Wednesday, April 26th, 2023

A new tech buzzword has come to the healthcare industry: identity-driven engagement. This article explains what precisely identity-driven engagement is and how it applies to the healthcare industry’s patient engagement goals.

 

identity-driven engagement

 

What is Identity-Driven Engagement?

Identity-driven engagement is not a new concept. It has been used outside the healthcare industry for many years to describe how marketers personalize consumer experiences to build community and achieve better results. It relies on using customer or patient data to create relevant communications that speak to individuals where they are in their journeys.

 

Successful identity-driven marketing efforts require accurate and up-to-date data sources, as consumer needs and preferences can rapidly change. In some ways, the healthcare industry is at an advantage compared to retail and other B2C companies because of the data they have about their patients. However, electronic health records only tell part of the story. In order to execute patient engagement efforts, a customer data platform (CDP) or customer relationship management (CRM) system is often required to capture behavior occurring outside of the medical practice. Signals from other digital channels like social media activity, your website, and digital advertising can provide helpful information about what any patient wants at any particular moment.

 

Using identity-driven engagement techniques allows marketers to incorporate this data to create highly relevant messaging. You can expect better ROI from your marketing efforts by demonstrating that you know your users and their communities.

 

How to Incorporate Identity Into Your Patient Engagement Strategy

It can take time to set up the right systems to collect data before rolling out identity-driven engagement on a large scale. It’s best to start small by identifying one community in your patient population that isn’t engaging with your health system as expected.

 

For example, let’s say that in your community, 15% of people speak Spanish as their primary language. Yet, your patient population only contains 2% of this audience. How can you reach more of these people and educate them about your services? By adopting tenets of identity-driven engagement, you can create better messaging and content that speaks to their unique needs. Of course, using Spanish in these messages is vital. But the content should be more than just translations of the other messages you use for your English-speaking patients. This audience has unique needs regarding health concerns, insurance providers, and technology preferences. It’s up to you to learn about these needs and address them with unique messaging that is consistent across all platforms and locations.

 

Email and Identity-Driven Engagement

Email can be an excellent way to execute identity-driven engagement because it allows for trigger-based activity, audience segmentation, and personalization at scale.

 

First, emails can be triggered based on new patient activity to provide relevant and timely information. For example, when a patient visits the scheduling page on the website but exits without making an appointment, you can send them a follow-up email with links to complete the process. Suppose you know that the patient was viewing pages on dermatology. In that case, you can include helpful links to dermatologist profiles, related reviews, and other information that may be relevant as they decide where and when they want to visit.

 

Another core aspect of identity-driven engagement is audience segmentation. Every patient is unique, and it’s important to group patients with similar characteristics to deliver the most relevant messages. Including male patients in an email regarding breast cancer awareness month and the importance of receiving annual screenings doesn’t make sense. By sending the message only to relevant patients, it improves engagement and builds brand trust.

 

Furthermore, it’s possible to personalize the messages to improve their relevance without adding additional work. The same appointment scheduling reminder can be customized according to what you know about the patient. Do they prefer to talk to someone? Include the phone number prominently. Have they historically preferred morning time slots? Include a few available dates and times that are similar to their previous appointments. Making minor tweaks to the message contents can improve response rates and help your organization meet its goals.

Tags: audience segmentation, cdp, crm, customization, email marketing, email personalization, identity driven engagement, patient engagement, personalization, sdoh, segmentation, triggers
Posted in Email Marketing
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How to Personalize Email Campaigns Using Custom Fields

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023

Personalizing your email content is essential to provide an excellent patient experience. With LuxSci’s Secure Marketing platform, you can use the custom fields feature to make it easier to segment your contacts and personalize content at scale.

What Are Custom Fields?

Custom fields store additional data about your contacts. Traditional custom field data includes information like the first and last name of the email recipient, dates, and location information like city, state, or zip code.

You can use custom fields to capture and include any data you can think of, including information about health conditions, doctor names, insurance information, gender identity, and so much more.

A quick reminder on HIPAA compliance- if you use an email marketing platform to store and send patient health data, ensure it meets compliance requirements. Read more about what you need to look out for when choosing a vendor: Infographic: Most Email Software Cannot Use PHI.

Ways to Use Custom Fields to Personalize Emails

With LuxSci’s fully compliant email marketing solution, you can use custom fields to include any data you’d like, including protected health information. To personalize email content using custom fields, first, you must upload that data to the platform and link it to a specific email address. This is easy to do when uploading a contact list. First, create the custom field. Then, when uploading your list of email addresses, include a column that contains the custom field data. In the example below, both the First Name and Last Name columns represent custom fields.

list upload example

Next, create your email content. You can insert additional field data by using Dynamic Fields. Dynamic fields appear as %%field_name%% in the content creator. For example, say you want to insert a patient’s name into the body of the email. First, you would have uploaded the patient’s name as a custom field when you uploaded their email address. Then when creating the email copy, you would insert the “name” additional field, which would look like “%%first_name%%.” When the email is sent to the recipient, “%%first_name%%” is replaced by the patient’s name associated with that email address. In their inbox, %%first_name%% appears as “Joanna” or whoever the recipient is. This allows you to create one base message that can be personalized and sent to thousands of recipients.

5 Ways to Use Custom Fields to Personalize Healthcare Emails

Healthcare marketers can use first-party data to create communications that cater to an individual’s interests and preferences. In the healthcare industry, first-party data goes way beyond digital interactions. Information about health statuses, diagnoses, and recent patient visits can all be incorporated into marketing campaigns to guide patients on their journey to better health. Here are a few ideas for ways that you can use custom fields to personalize email messages.

1) Appointment Dates and Times

By associating each email contact with an upcoming appointment date and time, you can insert that data into the body of the email to send multiple reminders at once, confirm appointments, and reduce no-show rates. This is a workflow that can be automated and triggered to send one week before an upcoming appointment, with little additional work needed from the marketing team.

2) Doctor or Provider Name

You may want to include the individual’s provider name in an email message for many reasons. It can be helpful to ask for reviews and feedback, remind patients who their provider is, and build trust and connection with patients and their healthcare provider.

3) Locations

Including the address or office location can help remind patients of where their appointment will be held, especially for large hospital systems or for new patients. Making it as easy as possible to access healthcare services improves the patient experience.

4) Events and Educational Programming

One way to help patients on their healthcare journey is to provide program recommendations based on past behavior or diagnoses. For example, sending resources to diabetes patients based on recent test results can help patients take the right steps to improve their health.

5) Precision Nudging to Improve Health Outcomes

Precision nudging is a preemptive and proactive approach to patient communication that prompts action to overcome patient-specific barriers to action at the right time and place for scalable, sustained behavior change. Messages that drive behavior change include reminding patients to refill a specific prescription, reminders to schedule screenings and follow-up appointments, or pre and post-op instructions.

For some additional ideas on how to use PHI to personalize campaigns, check out some of our other blogs including: Personalize Healthcare Communications to Improve the Patient Experience.

Why Personalize Email Campaigns?

Using personalization techniques is an excellent way to improve engagement, provide a better patient experience, and receive a better ROI on email marketing. Patients expect a personalized healthcare experience, and customizing communications is one of the first steps you can take. Organizations not providing a personalized experience are at risk of declining patient satisfaction, retention, and reimbursement. A 2021 McKinsey survey of more than 3,000 US healthcare consumers found that satisfied patients are 28 percent less likely to switch providers.

personalization stats

To learn more about how to customize email campaigns using custom fields, schedule a demo of LuxSci’s Secure Marketing platform today.

Tags: appointment reminders, email personalization, patient engagement, patient retention, personalization
Posted in Email Marketing, LuxSci Library: HIPAA
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The PHI Difference in Healthcare Marketing

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023

Healthcare marketers are facing complex challenges with serious stakes. Unlike in other industries, healthcare marketers share messages that can impact people’s health and livelihood. Creating the most effective messaging needs to be a priority for healthcare marketing teams. Using first-party data is one way to make a major difference in your marketing efforts. Marketers can craft highly targeted campaigns using protected health information (PHI) to deliver better results for patients. 

First-Party Data for Healthcare

In some ways, healthcare marketers are at an advantage because of the amount of first-party data they can access. First-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers. The company owns this data and can verify its authenticity. Marketers can use data like digital interactions, purchase history, and preferences to create experiences that cater to an individual’s interests. In the healthcare industry, first-party data goes way beyond digital interactions. Information about health statuses, diagnoses, and recent patient visits can all be incorporated into marketing campaigns to guide patients on their journey to better health. 

Marketers in other industries know that first-party data achieves the highest return on investment of any data type. In 2020, Google partnered with Boston Consulting Group to study how brands succeed with first-party data strategies. The report found that businesses using first-party data for key marketing functions achieved up to a 2.9 times revenue uplift and a 1.5 times increase in cost savings. In addition, as data privacy restrictions grow and third-party cookies are phased out, marketers need more control over their data sources to ensure compliance.

Why Use PHI in Healthcare Marketing?

When healthcare organizations use PHI to segment their email lists and personalize campaign content, they experience better results. Using a HIPAA-compliant email marketing solution allows marketers to leverage the data and information they have about patients to increase engagement. When using PHI, there are so many ways to customize email content that can deliver impressive results.

PHI in healthcare marketing stats

It makes intuitive sense. What would you prefer- frequent emails about products and services you don’t want, or consistent emails that relate to your goals and interests? It’s an easy decision. No one likes to be annoyed by pointless emails. Using information about your patients’ health statuses and goals to craft personalized messages increases patient satisfaction and retention, while also improving engagement.

email stats

As discussed above, healthcare patient data is an excellent source of first-party data that is more comprehensive than the information gathered in other industries. However, healthcare marketers face another hurdle. In addition to getting patient consent to use this data for marketing purposes, organizations are also strictly governed by HIPAA compliance regulations that restrict the use of PHI.

The Challenge: HIPAA Compliance Requirements

So what can healthcare marketers do to surmount this obstacle? First, they must understand the regulations surrounding the transmission of protected health information (PHI). Responsible healthcare marketers must comply with HIPAA when utilizing patient data in their marketing efforts.

Most marketers rely on some sort of email marketing software, CRM, or CDP to manage their marketing campaigns. However, not all platforms are able to meet HIPAA’s stringent requirements. A simple approach to evaluating marketing software for HIPAA compliance focuses on three crucial aspects:

  1. Sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)
  2. Securely Store Data
  3. Securely Transmit Data

healthcare marketing comparison

First, any third party with access to PHI must sign a Business Associates Agreement to govern how the information will be secured and what happens in case of a breach. If they will not sign a BAA, the software should not be used to store or process PHI.

However, signing a BAA alone is not enough. Understanding the terms of service and what the provider allows is essential. If their terms of service forbid you from sending PHI, it could put your organization at risk. It’s also important to review how the data will be secured at rest and in transit. When storing patient health data in a marketing application, consider how it will be protected. Simply put, you must ensure that all PHI is encrypted and can only be accessed by people with the appropriate keys.

If protected health information is transmitted outside of the database or application via email, encryption must also be used to protect the data in transmission. At a minimum, TLS encryption (with the appropriate ciphers) is secure enough to meet HIPAA guidelines. However, many applications do not offer transmission encryption that is secure enough to comply with HIPAA. You should only send communications containing PHI if they are encrypted.

Conclusion

Using PHI data in your marketing efforts can yield improved results. However, this approach requires careful vetting and planning by your marketing and compliance teams to ensure data is secured under HIPAA regulations. To learn more about HIPAA-compliant marketing solutions, contact LuxSci today.

Tags: email marketing, email personalization, healthcare marketing, patient engagement, patient retention, personalization, phi, segmentation
Posted in Email Marketing
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4 Email Personalization Strategies for Member Engagement

Friday, November 4th, 2022

For many benefits administrators, it’s open enrollment season! During this period, individuals can make changes to their insurance coverage. It’s vital to engage members to educate them about their plans and benefits to increase satisfaction, retain members, and acquire new enrollees. This article presents four email personalization strategies for member engagement.

member engagement strategies

Insurance Information is ePHI

Before we get to strategies for improving engagement, it’s worth reflecting on the regulatory hurdles. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, healthcare payers, insurers, and benefits administrators are covered entities. This means they must abide by HIPAA regulations when transmitting and storing protected health information (PHI).

Emails about an individual’s insurance coverage and eligibility, plan types and offerings, health status, and financial information are considered PHI and must be protected accordingly. We’ve written extensively about the HIPAA requirements for email elsewhere, but in brief, this means that emails containing PHI need to be encrypted and archived appropriately. Do not proceed with the following strategies until a HIPAA-compliant email solution is implemented correctly.

 

4 Email Personalization Strategies for Member Engagement

Segmentation and personalization are the keys to crafting messages that appeal to your audience. Particularly when it comes to healthcare coverage, there is no one-size fits all approach. Personalization techniques allow marketers to create highly relevant emails that the audience will find beneficial.

Age-Related Changes

In the US health insurance market, insurance coverage is often tied to age. As individuals reach new stages of life, there is an opportunity for them to change their insurance coverage. For example, insurers and benefits administrators can create targeted messaging to:

  • 26-year-old individuals about to enter the healthcare marketplace and
  • 65-year-old individuals who qualify for Medicare

It would not make sense to send these messages to a sizeable non-segmented email list because they would be irrelevant to the majority of recipients. By segmenting your email list by age and creating targeted messaging, you will receive a better response and return on investment from your email campaigns.

Plan and Benefit Educational Opportunities

There are many different types of health insurance coverage and benefit plans. Educating enrollees on their plan benefits makes them more likely to utilize their coverage and be satisfied with their plan. For example, if eligible members are not taking advantage of a dental benefit, it may be wise to create an email campaign that educates them on what they can access with their benefits.

Geography-Specific Messaging

There are often differences in enrollment periods, eligibility, and benefits in the US market on a state-by-state basis. Creating personalized messages based on the recipient’s residence makes the messages more relevant. For example, sending recipients the accurate enrollment date based on their residence is essential to getting people to sign up!

Health Status Messaging

You can also use information you know about your members to craft messages that can help improve their health. For example, it may be possible to know who is overdue for an annual appointment, and email messages can help them reschedule care. Similarly, several standard preventative screenings are tied to age and gender, like annual mammograms for women at 40 years old. By sending an email to all members who meet that criteria reminding them to get screened, it can improve population health and reduce costs.

Conclusion

Today’s consumers prefer email communications from businesses and brands. Personalizing your approach can improve your campaign performance and deliver significant results. If you want help improving your enrollment outreach with HIPAA-compliant email, contact LuxSci.

Tags: benefits administration, email marketing, email personalization, ePHI, health insurance, hipaa compliance, hipaa marketing, patient engagement, personalization, segmentation
Posted in Email Marketing
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