Addressing Patient Referral Pain Points Using a HIPAA-Compliant Messaging App

Due to the rise in RSV, the volume of patients is still rising. With the increasing pressure that healthcare providers face, patient care experience is more extended wait times, access issues, and short staffing causes a delay in responsiveness. Burnout also impacts patient care experiences, and hospitals can minimize the impact of short-staffing by using our on-call feature to distribute working hours evenly among healthcare professionals.

Patients have a different perception of care experience as consumers, and patients seek and expect respect. To deliver the expected care that underlines the relational understanding that patients seek, healthcare providers must improve communication to translate quality care suited to the patient’s expectations. That would mean listening, communicating clearly, creating a precise treatment plan, taking the patient’s pain seriously, and treating the patient with respect.

Using technology to its fullest potential can help eliminate the common pain points that healthcare providers experience, such as relaying information and worrying whether it’s HIPAA compliant, task delegation, miscommunication, etc. Misdirected referral, miscommunication, and communication gaps contribute to patient pain points. Combined, patients feel incredibly frustrated, dissatisfied with their experience, and unlikely to follow the provider’s recommendation. According to Institute for Healthcare Improvement, as many as half of the referrals were never completed. The consequences of referral breakdowns are detrimental to patients’ safety and health. Referral breakdowns delay diagnosis and treatment. Healthcare providers can minimize referral breakdowns by doing the following:

• Improve interoperability.
• Improve and monitor handoffs during the referral process.
• Delineate workflow process.
• Have accountability.
• Monitoring EHR referral process.
• Apply evidence-based communication for patients.

Referrals are essential steps in patient treatment and health. Institute for Healthcare Improvement reported, “Twelve million adults experience a diagnostic error in the ambulatory setting in the US every year (Singh et al. 2014). Such errors harm patients in a variety of ways, including missed diagnoses, which can lead to delayed, unnecessary, or harmful treatment, and negative emotional or financial consequences (National Academies 2015).” Errors are detrimental to patient health and waste a lot of resources and money when there are so many patients experiencing diagnostic errors and not following through with referrals. Referral processes are complex and challenging when there’s no secure messaging app to communicate across departments. Patient health and experience are in jeopardy. Healthcare professionals can avoid patient referral pain points by investing in a HIPAA-compliant messaging app.

Amtelco Secure Messages can improve hospital interoperability, enable frictionless cross-department communication, enhance peer-to-peer connection, delineate workflow process, etc.
Improving patient referrals will enhance patient experience and reduce medical errors. Investing in an encrypted messaging app will allow healthcare providers to distribute tasks equally, reduce burnout, and relay clear messages to the right people. Saving time and money and enhancing the referral process experience for patients.